I'm Done with Politics. Aren't You?

It's time for something new.

Photo by diana kereselidze on Unsplash

You hear variations on this clever gotcha phrase all the time now:

If you’re not doing politics…

They’re doing you.

Of course, most of those who consider themselves “politically engaged,” never stop to explain what it actually means to “do” politics. Are we talking about informing ourselves on issues and advocating for important causes? Are we talking about questioning and examining our assumptions against available evidence? Are we talking about showing up at the polls every other year? Are we talking about going to a government-sanctioned protest in a free speech zone? Do we mean talking trash about our opponents every day and sharing memes?

Do we mean showing up at cookouts and family reunions and making our friends and relatives uncomfortable by talking about abortion rights?

What, exactly?

Do we mean spreading our own versions of conspiracy theories instead of addressing what’s actually going on in the world? Do we mean agreeing to talk only about the issues our leaders find expedient? Do we mean responding to every single “urgent” text blast and donating to every political campaign? Do we mean finding a new “five alarm fire” every 72 hours that calls on us to find new words to condemn the transnational crime mafia who simply doesn’t care what we think? Do we mean saying we’re going to call our representatives and urge them to invoke the 25th amendment against our psychopathic president, even though we’ve been talking about that for ten years and it never happens?

If we’re talking about the former—informing yourself on the issues and keeping an open mind—then I’ve got bad news:

Nobody is doing politics.

Not really.

By “nobody,” I mean a very slim portion of the population. Maybe that includes you. If it does, then you’re already nodding along. Everyone else? They’re not staying informed on the issues. They’re not doing deep dives into their own country’s history. They’re not developing their scientific literacy. They’re not examining their assumptions against reality. I’m fairly confident in my assessment.

If they were, they would oppose all wars no matter who was fighting them or where they were being fought. They wouldn’t quietly agree to “hush” climate science for the sake of fangirling over Mark Carney. They wouldn’t spend all their energy yelling at people who agree with them 90 percent of the time. They would read books like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States.

They would understand:

In the very beginning, most ordinary people didn’t want to do politics in the way that Americans do politics today. It was forced on them. They deeply resented the “founding fathers” for drafting their sons and brothers into a conflict that had nothing to do with them. They wanted no part in the story. They didn’t feel any “freer” after the Revolution. Because they weren’t.

The whole idea of “doing politics” was done to them. It was never about them doing anything, not for themselves.

So it is today.

In the U.S., what counts as political engagement has been almost entirely absorbed by the ruling class. Call your representatives? Spend Saturday at a protest? Share a bunch of AI memes? Sass billionaires online from our phones?

These forms of protest might make us feel good. They may bring vindication or catharsis, but they’re ultimately toothless.

They change very little.

More often these days, “doing politics” means feeding a political industrial complex that consists of consultants and influencers who sell their souls one memo or one podcast episode at a time. It means approving and endorsing everything your chosen political party does. It means defending and rationalizing all of their actions. It means silencing criticism and dissent. It means laughing at everything your favorite talk show hosts say. It means rejecting alternative viewpoints or evidence that happen to conflict with the vibes of the hour.

So if politics is now about choosing one side and sticking with them no matter what, if it’s about slick memes and sick burns, if it’s about conflating “unity” and groupthink, if it’s about spreading conspiracy theories and refusing to admit you ever make a mistake, if it no longer means staying informed on the issues and cultivating moral courage, then that’s it.

I’m done.

I’m no longer interested in that kind of politics. I’ve been growing less and less interested for years now.

It doesn’t mean I’m going to go out of my way to avoid the news. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop reading intellectually challenging material. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop talking about the issues I care about. It doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend that the stupid things our politicians say and do aren’t having an impact on our lives. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop thinking about the biggest problems our civilization faces and coming up with solutions to them.

It just means:

I’m seeking solutions outside the realm of conventional politics. More and more, that’s going to become vital to our survival. Why? Because most of the political discourse in the U.S. has become so detached from a basic, practical, scientific, morally grounded approach to reality that it no longer serves any purpose. The consultants and the pundits and the podcast hosts no longer have the slightest clue how to address our problems. They don’t know what our problems are. They never did. They’re just spewing nonsense, every day, while trying to be the first to predict x catastrophe. It has devolved into a stream of sound and fury.

There’s a great passage from Shakespeare about this:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death…

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

That sums up how I feel about our political discourse over the last few years. It’s a walking shadow, a record stuck on repeat, spinning and spinning, playing the same tune with the same lyrics over and over again. Nobody in the room will bother to put on a new album. Well, almost no one. The minute someone tries, it’s like ten more people throw them out of the room. They want to sit there and listen to that skipping record because they’ve gotten used to it.

They like it.

The recent run of progressive wins gives me some hope about our future, but let’s face it. The best these leaders can do now is engineer a soft landing for civilization. I mean that in the most sincere way. That’s our goal now:

A soft landing.

With enough concerted effort, we might be able to turn a population crash with billions of deaths into a slow degrowth, a slide into a low-energy future braced with highly strategic use of solar and wind, something that looks absolutely nothing like the illusory future we’re still being promised.

If I’m completely frank, anyone who tells us we’ve still got a bright future ahead without any serious sacrifice or reckoning doesn’t deserve my trust or yours. Because to say that everything is going to be fine is a lie.

It’s a lie that will only cause pain later.

So when I say I’m done with politics, I mean I’m done entertaining the lies that everything is going to be fine. Maybe it won’t be terrible. Maybe we can find or engineer a new kind of peace and happiness in the ruins of this collapsing global monstrosity we call industrial civilization. But we’re only going to achieve those genuine forms of tranquility if we embrace honesty first, and give up all these comforting illusions and self-deceptions.

What politics has become is a tale told by an idiot.

I’m done with it.

Aren’t you?