Politics - It's What's for Dinner

[Sneelock]

I just found a draft of something I decided against posting back in November. I must have wanted to post it since I saved it so I'm posting it now.

I've been enjoying the "How Do You Plan to Vote?" thread. I thought I'd start my own thread mainly since I'm not voting over there. I checked "I don't plan to vote" in the poll so I could see the choices. zero conservative votes last time I looked. Ain't life full of surprises?

Anyway, Our Pal Rayge wrote something that really got my motorboat going. First of all, Rayge and everybody else in that thread - YOU know how you feel about things and I wouldn't presume to tell you otherwise. I just got all motivated to riff on what he says below....
Nov 7, 2019 5:34:53 GMT -8 rayge said:... "first of all, every single one of us on this board (me included) is politically impotent, and essentially pissing in the wind in these threads. Secondly, ALL politicians, whatever their stated allegiances, are partial, use spin, tell 'lies' (as if there is any such thing as objective truth, it's all choices: the ones we think of as good, decent, honest, are the ones who think or act in a way similar to the way we see ourselves) and are probably more flawed as human beings than most because IMO to crave the power to affect the lives of others is an indicator of personality characteristics that I read as flaws."

okay, so I get what he's saying and I even agree up to a point but there is one area where I find myself at odds with others in that thread. I often LOVE politics. One of the big mucky-mucks in the company I work for just up and quit. well, I'm anxious to hear anything about it - true or not. It's something that affects me and I have an urge to know more about it. Did he rub somebody the wrong way? has he been looking at another job on the side? He leads a secret life, maybe? right or wrong, good or bad, this interests me.
so, that's part of it. I'm nosy. But, there's more to it. you see, I often HATE politics so I get what Rayge and most of you are saying. this blows, that blows, they all blow. it's hard to argue. BUT, I don't agree that we are all politically impotent. I'll expand on that in a minute if you don't fall asleep. For starters let me say why I think politics are good.
Look, somebody had to decide that we shouldn't shit where we eat. somebody had to suggest that. I'm sure it needed suggesting and I'm sure the people who wanted to shit wherever they goddam please had a problem with it. Somebody took it upon themselves to say "from this day forward we eat HERE and we shit THERE". somebody had to do it. you don't die of diseases after you eat - you have politics to thank.

I lived in a neighborhood with too much garbage. I attended a meeting. "what can we do about the garbage?" somebody asks. "why don't we all pitch in and pick it up?" somebody replied. "How's Next Sunday?"
This is politics. we picked up the garbage. I spent a few weekends with these people. I liked some of them WAY better than I liked others but we agreed on a problem and we pretended to like each other long enough to achieve a common goal. it can be done.
I lived in another neighborhood with too much garbage. I had a dog to walk so I'd take a garbage bag with me. I'd just pick up garbage along with my dog's doodies. I did this over a period of years. sometimes the garbage in the neighborhood looked a little better. maybe I had something to do with it and maybe I didn't. sometimes people thanked me. sometimes they figured I was a crazy old guy and maybe they were right.
so, both neighborhoods had less garbage but the most garbage got picked up with the magic ingredient - POLITICS.

part of the reason I love politics was the people I grew up around. I had about a half dozen people in my family who all felt pretty much the same about everything - they were all "Goldwater Republicans". they all felt the Government did more for people than it should. they all voted for the same candidates and very nearly all the same issues and provisions. they STILL argued like cats and dogs but good natured cats and dogs that knew they were going to get fed. I'd say every pot luck or barbecue I attended as a child involved grown ups good-naturedly telling each other why their heads were up their asses until they hugged, made plans for the next get together and left.

who doesn't agree that everybody in politics has ulterior motives and can't be totally trusted? well, I think this applies to everybody! If we make a list of the most effective politicians of the 20th century we are going to see some very bad qualities. I think we would find most of them manipulative, inflexible, not as diplomatic as we'd like. when the dust settles you either think the thing was worth doing or you don't. Eisenhower rasied taxes to build infrastructure. He also changed "Rememberence Day" to "Veteran's Day". If you think either of those things were worth doing then this is because of politics. the problem is we all know the things we DON'T like.

As I say, I've enjoyed listening to people talk politics since a pretty early age. WAY before I started forming opinions of my own I would hear people saying what oughta be done and what shouldn't be done. IMO something started to change somewhere along the way. I think this "all politicans are liars" reasoning, sound as it may be, has unleashed something else into my political world.
people who voted for Donald TRUMP voted for him because he was NOT a politician. they must have felt very strongly about this since he had no history of politics and has never displayed much of an understanding of them. So virulent was this hatred of politics that his personal history was inconsequential to many who voted for him.

All I'm saying is I understand hating politics but I think the more we complain about it the more we slide down the slippery slope of something worse.

[Sneelock]

The Short Version:
I think the hatred of politics has been harnessed as a political power and this scares me

[Sneelock]

John Coan is sick of politics. I’m going to put on my Water Buffalo hat without a mask, go wreck his flat and sneeze on him.
Won’t you join me?

If not, please feel free to post any political bile in this thread since I know for a fact he can ignore it.

[Sneelock]

If nobody joins me,JC knows I’m perfectly capable of arguing with myself ( exhibit A: BCB word association thread)
Ideally a thread like this could be like a political opinion Thunder-dome!

several people enter!
Several people leave!

[Charlie O.]

The older I get, the more it's brought home to me that EVERYTHING we do that involves other people is politics.

I'm embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to figure that out. I did not grow up enjoying listening to others talk about politics, or (as a rule) paying attention to what politicians did on (or against) The People's behalf. I thought all that shit was boring. I was young and foolish.

How does somebody who "isn't a politician" get 74 million votes? Politics.

[Sneelock]

Topic: voting
Is it overrated? Couldnt we just arm wrestle or pull a sword out of a stone?

[Deleted]

May 29, 2020 17:30:21 GMT Sneelock said:

The Short Version:
I think the hatred of politics has been harnessed as a political power and this scares me

On the Brexit sites before the last election people were foaming at the mouth at the govt for the lack of determination to push brexit through. Traitors was the cry, they are all corrupt and they better watch out when the time to vote came. It was very anti politics. MP's called traitors , traitors!
All it took was someone from the party that had failed them previously to say I will do it and bang, 80 seat majority. All the traitors back in the game.
You are right to be worried Snee, Trump and Boris are elected because they appear anti political. This appeals to the mob.
At the moment the mob it appears rule. They hate politics but they want a leader.

[Reactionary Rage]

I think the "everything is politics" is an insidious idea. In my experience those who say this are the kinds of people who just want to talk about politics and little else hence why they try and bring everything back to it. Activist types. There is too much fucking politics these days and its turning people, friends and families against each other. But then....that's what's some people want.

[Charlie O.]

Jan 13, 2021 8:25:02 GMT Reactionary Rage said:

I think the "everything is politics" is an insidious idea. In my experience those who say this are the kinds of people who just want to talk about politics and little else hence why they try and bring everything back to it. Activist types.

That certainly doesn't describe me!

For me, at least, it really is just about recognizing that words and actions can count for a lot, even if it isn't obvious at the time, or even if it's on a very small (even very personal) scale. The little things do, or at least can, add up.

And as has been made very clear in recent elections, something as simple as voting can in fact make a huge difference, for better or for worse, in our day to day lives and in our world - despite what rayge says.

[tory]

It's difficult to tell if there's a correlation between voter turnout in elections and volatility. The idea is that the more people that turn out to vote, the more reasons there are for doing so, which means that people are generally pissed off.


In the US, the 2020 election was the first time the voter turnout hit over 60% of the electorate since 1968, which was arguably the other most volatile date in US history in the 20th century. Despite losing, Trump still gained more votes than in 2016. In 1960 the election was 62%, probably helped by the revolutionary manner in which that election used TV.

In the UK, the highest ever was 83%, back in 1950. This was after 3 years of austerity. In 2001, Blair was re-elected with 59% of the turnout, which is the lowest ever. The 2019 election was 67%, the highest since the 1997 election. In recent times, the highest was 74% in the 1974 election that saw Wilson elected as a minority government.

Most famously in 1933, around 86% of the electorat turned out to see Hitler elected in Germany.

Each country has its own voting culture, so it is difficult to read too much into those results, but I think it's a structural weakness of democracies, in that when too many people are politically "inflamed" for want of a better phrase, then often the result is volatile. We all want that "everyone voting" culture because it's meant to be an exercise of "our hard earned rights won by others before us" but the actual reality on the ground is often a bitter pill to swallow.

There is something to be said about the way countries like France and Germany distill their voting into rounds, which often, through an elongated process, sort of thins out the volatility.


Personally, I think we've reached a tipping point where it seems like politics has seeped into everything. Like Dougie says, there's this "activism" that seems to be very prevalent amongst young people at the moment. This article sums it up



www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/09/its-better-than-worrying-about-the-state-of-the-world-how-to-get-politically-active-this-year

I get what Williams says here. Get involved, get working, help out - it's meaningful, it's helping. But why the overt political angle?  Surely, just being a citizen is good enough? 

For me, Michael Oakeshott nailed it back in 1947

Political activity, he wrote in an early essay, “is a highly specialized and abstracted form of communal activity; it is conducted on the surface of the life of a society and except on rare occasions makes a remarkably small impression below that surface.” Political activity encourages a “limitation of view, which appears so clear and practical, but which amounts to little more than a mental fog.”

Over the weekend I deleted twitter off my phone and removed the home page from my browser. I've muted anyone on FB who posts too much political stuff. I made a promise to myself to not get involved in arguments on the internet about politics for a while and to step back. Perhaps this is the last one! I doubt it...

[Crunchy Col]

People like the sound of their own voices, basically, and it's exemplified by the way message boards like this seem to encourage 'political discussion'.

It's not surprising that the longest posts are related to recent elections or protests. It's verbiage without so much of a hint of a smile on its face.

Sometimes it's fun, but more often than not inflexibility and arrogance characterise the discussion and it brings out the worst in people.

[Deleted]

Jan 13, 2021 9:39:04 GMT Crunchy Col said:

People like the sound of their own voices, basically, and it's exemplified by the way message boards like this seem to encourage 'political discussion'.

It's not surprising that the longest posts are related to recent elections or protests. It's verbiage without so much of a hint of a smile on its face.

Sometimes it's fun, but more often than not inflexibility and arrogance characterise the discussion and it brings out the worst in people.

Fuck off snowflake ❄️

[hippopotamus]

Can I get a button that says "I'm with Sneelock" *

Everything is politics doesn't really say enough about anything to be an interesting statement. You could say that about a lot of things if you look at them a certain way, and choose to deny it if you look in another direction.

My father has always been very pro politics. He's sometimes a laughable character who can be both a communist and fervently Conservative, and will enjoy arguing any side he feels isn't being argued enough.

He got involved very deeply in local politics. I won't go into the ins and outs, but I am very proud of him. I think I always believed him to be much too right wing for me, but there he was banning non-sustainable disposable cups from Starbucks and raising tens of thousands for homeless people.

I get to hear about the in fighting and little schemes and Most of the time it's feels like school children bullying each other so that they can win the pettiest little victory, just in time for the next election and everything to be undone again.

But these are the people who decide how many doctors we have, what funding the schools get and whether this lady with 9 children should be given free accommodation.

It's very easy, much much too easy to have a distaste for it. From the local level to the high and mighty Trump level, everything is a weapon of political gain. The people in it are only in it because they have the stomach for it, not because they have special training or even expertise.

Still, I can't help wondering what if we did all get involved, passionately fought for things that matter and took our civic duty to heart. The good guys could outnumber the fools. Because at the moment we're just victims of the whims of the petty few... And it doesn't feel good.


* or "snee's the space dog for me?" Or "Snee's into the wind, and see what comes back to you?"

[Deleted]

I know that the last couple of years in the UK politics is shaped by the shouters in society.

[Reactionary Rage]

You wanna change things? Do something local.

All the rest is posturing, to some degree.