Semi-recent posts by F.T. Rea and Vivian Paige about political blogging got me thinking about my own lack of interest in politics lately.  I don’t consider myself a “political blogger” in the accepted sense, but I certainly fall into the category of people that are less interested in politics this year.

One possible reason is a sense of completion.  I started writing about politics essentially to learn about politics – to become a more informed citizen.  And lo these many years later, I feel like I've learned everything I need to know.  Which is, in a nutshell:  It's all lies and obfuscation. :)  I don’t think that’s the main reason, though.

Mainly I think it’s the tedium that comes from repeating the same thing over and over again.  I still feel a certain responsibility to try to educate passersby about all the lies and obfuscation, but each new post I think about is essentially repeating the same thing I’ve written before, which is kind of boring.  (Also, reading the same lies and obfuscation over and over again is pretty boring.)  Maybe I need a standard set of posts, so all I have to do is write, “Standard political post #23.”

Also, it’s time-consuming to refute the lies and obfuscations.  If you read something that sounds fishy, it takes a lot of work to dig up the facts to back up your suspicions and present it in a way that’s interesting, understandable and maybe even a little entertaining.  Which, I’m convinced, is exactly what political consultants count on – it’s simply too difficult for the average voter to sort out the facts well enough to make an informed judgment, so they have to rely on sound bites and headlines.

Even worse than that, I’m not sure the average voter knows he or she needs to do so much work as a voter.  When it comes to issues, most people seem perfectly willing to accept whatever someone tells them, without question.

As an example, a while back at work (this year), we all received an email from a high-ranking member of the organization warning us that we should all be careful because fines for speeding in Virginia would soon jump to $3000!  Everyone gasped and immediately started making plans to tell all their loved ones to slow down.

I was the only one that found anything suspicious about the email – the only one who even thought about trying to investigate the story.  Even though no one had heard anything about it on the news, everyone absolutely believed it was true.  There was a link in the email to an article that was the source of the information.  I clicked the link and read the article (I don’t remember exactly, but I think this is it), which did indeed talk about Virginia speeding fines going up to outrageous figures on July 1.  So the email must be legit, right?  Well, apparently nobody bothered to look at the date on the article, which was somewhere in 2007.  Anyone in the Virginia blogosphere should recognize that as the year of those outrageous “civil remedial penalties” (also known as “abuser fees”) that were repealed shortly thereafter (noted here on that same site).  But nobody at work remembered any of that or believed it had been repealed, despite my assurances that it was perfectly safe to speed this summer.  After all, this email came from a trusted source!  An authority figure, no less!  How could it be questioned?

Fighting that kind of blindness on a daily basis – especially in written form – is exhausting.

One other thing I’ve seen that sort of squashes one’s enthusiasm for politics:  I suspected this all along, but the change of administration from Bush to Obama made it abundantly clear that (most) Republican bloggers and (most) Democratic bloggers are exactly the same, and they write exactly the same things - they just substitute in different names depending on who is in office at the time.  Their entire purpose in life is to attack the other side.  All the rhetoric is exactly the same.  Bush blows it with this or that.  Obama blows it with this or that.  Bush is a Nazi.  Obama is a Communist.  So-and-so "doesn't get it."  So-and-so "gets it."  Blah, blah, blah. It’s childish and reduces the dialog (if you can even call it that) to the level of a schoolyard shoving match.

I’ve started looking at Republicans and Democrats as street gangs on opposite sides of the road, battling for turf. (Possibly also dancing to show tunes.) Some of them probably have ideals that got them started in their respective party, but most of that seems lost in the he-said-she-said.

I figure the best political dialogue would come from Independent or Third-Party bloggers.  They don’t usually have a natural “enemy” to butt up against all the time like Republicans and Democrats do. Unfortunately, as in the real world, Third Party views are hard to find in the political blogosphere.