I have noticed that people who are understandably fed up with Washington DC tend to vent about politicians. This can be exhausting to listen to.
They relish tearing into so-and-so politician, as though so-and-so politician can hear them. Like they’re hurting so-and-so politician. The sentiment is “Take that!”
The people who engage in this behavior do not realize that venting in their kitchens or living rooms does not affect anyone or anything. You are not sending a message. You are talking to the walls.
The power structure is delighted that there exists a public relief valve and that the venters will go to work or out in public and keep quiet and not endeavor to communicate with their fellow Americans, trying to effect real change. Please, vent away. Historian and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his 1835 masterpiece “Democracy in America”:
A foreigner does, it is true, sometimes meet Americans who are not strict slaves of slogans … often they even go as far as to point out the defects which are changing the national character and suggest means by which this tendency could be corrected, but no one, except yourself, listens to them, and you, to whom they confide these secret thoughts, are only a stranger and will pass on. To you they will disclose truths that have no use to you, but when they go down into the marketplace they use quite different language.
Spot on. Because this is the only way to effect change: communication and discussing politics rationally.
There is another variant of this behavior. The people who declare “I don’t care about politics, I don’t care what they do.” Take that, politics! Take that, Washington DC! We need to be paying attention. Should we just permit Congress to make decisions without concern for what they are doing? That is a one-way ticket to tyranny.
Because power will always do what it can get away with. Like the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Washington DC is not going to do you any favors, we have to demand those “favors.” Not paying attention does not hurt Washington DC. They are quite pleased you are distracted; you’re doing the opposite of hurting them, you’re doing them a favor.
And I guess I’ll include those who proudly proclaim “I don’t watch the news, it’s depressing!” The news would be much less depressing if we were better educated and politically articulate. The news coverage would improve, and what they are reporting would improve. The news is depressing largely because we are detached.
These behaviors are juvenile and supportive of power.
