Are you wasting your time following national politics (election)?

No, which is why I don’t follow it much. I feel I know enough to make my decisions.

Because democracy is not something you just believe, it’s something you do. You know? Lets all stop paying attention and stop voting and giving a shit and see where that gets us. Honestly. The reason you can spend your time on “work, sleep, errands, family, maybe school, personal interests” is that there are still enough people in this country who give a shit and are willing to put time and effort into trying to make sure that whole thing doesn’t go completely to hell.

Anyway, are you serious about this question or are you just trying to make people like me furious?

Americans have inherited an incredible legacy of freedom and prosperity. Most of the heavy lifting, the hard, backbreaking work has been done, most of the blood, sweat and tears have been spilled. All we have to do is not take it for granted and to maintain it.

@lillycoyote GA!.
@Charles, Democracy is participatory, however cynical one might be.

I interpreted the question differently than @lillycoyote. @Charles mentions “the news stations”. Watching the awful sport of politics in the US isn’t participating in a Democracy, in my opinion. It’s spin and distraction.

Think about what you know right now. You have a pretty good idea about the type of positions you support and those that you do not. If you do some research on the candidates, you’ll likely find that one candidate is much closer to your position on many of these issues. What could you possibly gain by watching the nightly news to find out what each candidate likes to eat, who he or she has associated with, where they were born, who would be more fun to have a beer with, who’s speech writers are more skilled, who has the better hair, etc?

So, take the presidential election. You know who you are voting for. Get active in registering people to vote and make sure they are going to get out to the polls. Sitting around “following” the horseshit that passes for news in the corporate media is not participating.

So when @Charles asks if we have the time to follow every dissection of every statement and crap that makes it to tv, I think it’s reasonable to skip all that and still be a participatory agent in this democracy.

Full disclosure: I don’t watch tv and I don’t “keep up” on US politics. Yet somehow I happen to be more informed than many of my neighbors who do watch tv and are following this crap.

@tom_g Actually, I don’t believe the question was merely about following every dissection on television.

The OP clearly said

”Unless you have a personal interest like an academic interest or a hobby, why would you follow the national political scene – especially pertaining to the upcoming national election? The news stations have devoted a great deal of resources and air time to it”

and

” Between work, sleep, errands, family, maybe school, personal interests, who has the time to worry about the election? Do people who spend more than a few minutes a day on this stuff simply not have a life?”

It sounds, to me, that the question is not really about the everything being dissected, that’s just one sentence, and that is mostly horse shit; the television, the question seems clearly, to me at least, seems to about be about politics in general, the election in particular. The issue with television seem a minor aside.

Perhaps @Charles will clarify. Only he knows what his intentions are. I hope the @Charles you are imagining in your comment, the one who is already informed and who is going to vote; the one who will organize a voter registration drive and make sure everyone gets out to vote is the real Charles because that’s not the Charles I am picturing.

His ears should be burning now, the way we are talking about him. :-)

So, how much time will the American public ponder, debate, argue, fight, sue, counter sue Obama’s revelation he is for gay marriage. In the myriad of things and issues voters process to come up with an election decision, how much weight will this carry?
Also, the guy who spends 100 hours researching the issues has just as much voting power as the guy who flips a coin.

I don’t.
Republican, Democrat, president, senator, district rep, judge, SC justice- all are irrelevent.
The course of American civilization is gradually moving toward centralized power and economic control no matter whom you vote for. The rate of this probably predictible slide into decadence may change from time to time but the end result will be the same, no matter whom you vote for.
Then, someday there will be another revolution, and people will start to pay attention.

@Charles: “Also, the guy who spends 100 hours researching the issues has just as much voting power as the guy who flips a coin.”

Ok, @lillycoyote – maybe I did misinterpret the question.

But I do wonder what could possibly occur between now and November that would require any research. We know these guys. We know what’s at stake. The stuff between now and November can only be total horseshit.

@josie: “The course of American civilization is gradually moving toward centralized power and economic control no matter whom you vote for.”

Didn’t you make this claim in a recent thread? I believe some people asked you to follow up on what you meant by this statement. Did you? I probably missed it.

Who knew politics couldn’t be a personal interest, or even your job? Learn something new, every day.

@Charles Americans have always been a contentious bunch and American politics has always been a noisy, messy, convoluted and sometimes perplexing business and it always will be.

@tom_g Different people are interested in “politics” and political and social issues for different reasons. Some people are just interested. Some people like to stay informed. For some people it is game, for some it is sport and for some people it’s a passion or a way of life. And there are still a lot of undecided voters around. Many people don’t make up their minds until the last minute. An election cycle can turn on a dime. Sure there are die hards who would either never vote Republican or never vote Democratic. I like to keep up. I find politics interesting; not just the issues but the noise and commotion of it all, the sport too.

Some people talk about “politics” as though it is something separate and outside of ourselves but political choices are choices about public policy and about how we function and live every day; about business, about schools, about communities, about science, about war, about law, about rights and responsibilities, about life and limb, about health and security. All those things.

I know, this question was, I guess about the Presidential election and I am drifting.

Because policy affects you and the community you live in. Even if all you really care about is local politics and what the asshats on the city council are doing these days, the laws, regulations, and policies that affect their rhetoric and decisions (or indecision, corruption, etc.) are determined at the regional, state, and federal levels.

The decisions politicians make affect aspects of your life, whether directly or indirectly. If you don’t stay informed, then you have no ability to influence any part of these decisions, even if it’s just to find like-minded individuals to grouse to.

Politicians fear educated, involved electorates. It’s why many are invested in keeping you ignorant as much as possible.

I know these days it’s easy to feel completely turned off, and feel like it’s a waste of time to do anything with politics, but ignorance is not always bliss.

You forgot a significant area of personal interest in following politics: money. The markets are intimately tied to the news.

Because if people like us didn’t keep up with it, people like you wouldn’t have known about (and stopped!) SOPA/PIPA. If we didn’t keep up with it, we wouldn’t know about the backdoor replacement for SOPA, CISPA, and be able to tell others about it. If we didn’t keep up with it, we wouldn’t be able to expose what politicians are up to in the way of women’s and LGBT rights to the folks that don’t keep up with national politics.

The political is the personal. Shit happens all the time that can drastically change our lives. It’s our responsibility to keep up with it. For people like you, it’s a good thing that we do.

@augustlan Exactly!

@tom_g I was struck by the similarities between the Republican primary/debates and a “reality/game” show, such as Survivor, or any of the numerous talent shows. The difference, in addition to format, is that instead of going to your phone and the website to vote, you have to go to your local polling place and vote in the Republican primary.

Yes, FOX News sucks and you have to know when to turn off your TV and when to stop reading. That being said, there’s this article on Mashable about the influence of money in politics. This is a quote, specifically regarding CISPA and why this sort of legislation keeps on coming.

Lessig’s advice for those fighting against CISPA is simple: Take a step back and find the root cause of bad legislation. (...) He said 0.26% of Americans donated to a candidate in the last Congressional cycle, while 0.01% gave more than $10,000 — a sign that average Americans aren’t getting their voices heard in Washington. (...) “Until we change this, it’ll be the same as it ever was,” said Lessig. “No matter what you care about, nothing’s going to get fixed until we fix this.”

According to this, not only paying attention is not a waste of time, it’s not enough.