Political Disillusionment

I don’t often talk politics. I’ll sometimes mention a social issue on my blog, but I never repost or speak about political opinions on social media feeds.

This isn’t because I don’t have them.

It’s because I don’t like to complain about something I can’t do anything about, and I don’t believe that reposting or writing angry political stuff on social media actually improves the world at all.

At best, it’s an echo chamber – because most likely the people you’re friends with on social media all think the same way as you, so you’re all pretty much just shouting, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” back and forth at each other. The people in charge are probably not monitoring our news feeds to find out what they should do next.

At worst, it turns into a fruitless, pointless, ugly fight – one in which everyone walks away angry and unsatisfied and no minds and hearts are changed. It’s not that hearts and minds cannot change, because with open, honest discussion between people who are currently sitting in the same place and looking one another in the eye it is entirely possible, but I have never (not once) seen it happen via social media, so I won’t waste my time.

Then there’s the fact that my political opinions are pretty depressing. I could bash the President, sure, he’s certainly an easy target with the way he constantly (and pointlessly) mouths off like an idiot via social media, but why bother? At the last election I practically went into the voting booth crying because I couldn’t decide which option was worse than the next – I felt they were all universally horrible. So yes, I could say, “Trump is horrible!” except that I genuinely thought the other choices were every bit as bad in different ways. So by shouting about his badness I feel like I’m saying I wish one of the other candidates had won – and that’s not how I feel. How I feel is that I desperately wish there had been sane and reasonable choices available. There were not, so I went in there knowing that regardless of who won America had already lost.

During the last election I also considered the choice to disenfranchise myself, and that’s a terrible choice I couldn’t make either. I had to go into that voting booth because I couldn’t dishonor the sacrifices of the men and women who struggled, fought, and even died to give me that right.

But how does it honor their memory when the only choices I have lie between different types of monsters?

For monsters, my friends, is all we’ve got.

I’ve officially lost faith, all faith, in our politicians. I trust none of them. I believe in none of them. I dislike all of them. America rose fast, and now it falls just as fast. I believe deeply in our system of democracy, I believe that it is good, but the political ruling class that has developed and is currently infesting it like a horde of termites is not good, they are all quite bad. Frequently I believe they are evil, and I do not know how to get rid of them.

Being angry on social media isn’t going to do it. Neither is this blog. But this is my space on the internet to talk about how I feel, even if how I feel right now is pretty damn hopeless.