Political Process and Participation

[Loreths]

I'm trying to formulate a concise argument on the make-up of the Political process, so bare with me...

Do any of you think it is wrong that the vast majority of the people who vote in our country can't tell you what the 3rd amendment to the constitution is. Or that the people who vote are more interested in what's happening to one teen girl in Aruba(while tragic) than the ending of the Supreme Court's session with potentially huge decisions coming out.

Politics shouldn't be an interest. When you ask some people about politics, people who don't post on these message boards, people who would be considered as "Average American", you'll find responses ranging from "I'm not interested" or "Both sides are similar, neither will actually do much". Normal Americans would rather do anything else than actually pay attention to politics, and when it comes time to actually participate in a political debate or vote, just repeat what they might have heard from a political pundit, if they say anything at all. Or better yet, quote a line from the Bible, Torah, or Koran. So where is the problem? The problem is that people who are voting for the President, Senators and Representatives are not voting on what is actually important. In a purely Christian value vote, President Bush is a top candidate. However, the one measuring stick, whether or not he could carry out the duties of President as laid out in the Constitution, was ignored by the vast majority of Americans. Same thing with Kerry. I want to believe that 95 percent of the people who voted couldn't name two of the designated roles of the President. I just get frustrated talking to people, like my aunts and uncles, friends and family, who voted in the last election but have no idea about the issues. It makes me antsy to know that somewhere down the line, politics got a negative feeling toward it, and people stopped caring.

[newswolf56]

1. I believe the response of the public to politics is...

...mostly proportional to the degree the public believes in the likelihood of change. But note my qualification: "mostly." The other determinant is the extent to which the public buys into the malevolent anti-intellectuality that is the lingering legacy of the McCarthy years -- the great fear that one will be thought of as a "geek," "nurd," "brain," or "egghead" and so suspected of being a troublemaker or subversive if not an outright Communist.

Returning to my original point, though too many Americans instinctively identify with their plutocratic oppressor -- look not only at the election results since 1964 but the decline in union membership -- the support accorded both to Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. suggests this country can awaken for a genuinely Leftist candidate or leader: that is, a candidate or leader who can truly inspire hope.

But most Americans -- recognizing as they do the omnipotent neofeudal reality of the monopolist New Order -- have simply given up. And I do not see anywhere even on the most distant horizon a candidate who is likely to reawaken their courage. We need someone who combines the radicalism of FDR with the magnetism of Kennedy and King, and the fact there is no such person in our future (surely not now and probably not ever again) is very likely the death-knell for America.