In the finest traditions of blogging qua blogging, the prototypical online social media platform, Jack responds with an update to his previous post; and Kev Quirk weighs in, as I hoped he might.

I've no quarrel with Kev's wish to run an instance where politics is considered off topic, and there's no reason to belabor that issue.

What prompted me to consider joining 500.social was recalling the feeling I had when we learned that Biden had dropped out of the race. That's the sort of event that evokes an immediate, emotional response because of its significance to a broad range of people, presumably my "community."

Since I'd left Mastodon and Twitter, I had no platform to do that from my phone in the car. In retrospect, I might have used micro.blog. I do have it on my phone and an account, but it's an adjunct to the marmot, originally intended strictly to cross-post to Mastodon. Since I'm no longer on Mastodon, I'm not certain it serves any purpose, but I do get the impression some people follow the marmot on micro.blog, and it's only $5 a month.

But, I digress. Kev also disagrees that "everything is political," and I want to kick that around some more, along with what the idea of "community" is supposed to mean.

The more I get to know about Kamala Harris, the more I like her. Especially that she laughs, even at herself sometimes.

There's a quote that people either seem to enjoy because they think it's humorous, or because they feel they can mock her with it:

“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,”

If you're familiar with the Buddhist text, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, this may sound familiar to you. Nagarjuna tells us that "everything is contingent." (Disclaimer: I'm not a Buddhist, except in the context that everyone is a Buddhist, most of us just don't know it yet. I'm not an expert on Buddhist texts or thought, and I'm absolutely certain there are many people who would be quick to claim that I'm totally misunderstanding Nagarjuna and barking up the wrong tree. So be it. We're all just feeling our way through this thing.)

But Harris is right, I think, and I don't think she'd say something like that unless she understood it at some fairly deep level. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's intriguing. And encouraging.

America is supposedly a democracy. It's an imperfect one for many reasons, not the least of which is the Electoral College; but it may not be one for much longer. The work of democracy is political. It's not just showing up to vote on election day, which too few people do anyway. The value of democracy is that "power" (really, "authority") isn't concentrated in a small number of people for an indeterminate length of time. That the governed have some say in who governs.

I really hope I don't have to explain why I think democracy is important. There do happen to be a significant number of people who would welcome an autocracy in some form, particularly if the person in charge looked like them and shared their particular prejudices and fears, but I don't think many of them read the marmot.

So, back to "everything." Do I need to explain that the internet as an artifact is the result of political action? DARPA? The debates about how old children should be before they're allowed to have social media accounts are political debates. Even if you believe government shouldn't have a say in that, and that it should be up to the parents, that's a political position.

The frequencies that carry wifi and bluetooth and 5G signals? International agreements between governments, many if not most of which were democracies. Political.

Broadband access? It's a political choice, whether we leave that to the "free market," or if we use public resources to make that infrastructure available to regions the market would ignore.

Passionate about drones? Political. Street photography? Becoming political. Ubiquitous, network enabled cameras are changing the environment for police work, much to the dismay of the police. So political.

Some of these examples are national or international issues, but local ones are perhaps even more important, though of less interest to a dispersed online "community."

Flint Michigan, "This is water."

Zoning. Who gets to breathe clean air? Politics.

But I would argue that there isn't a single aspect of anyone's life that isn't touched in many different ways, from the profound to the mundane, by government, by politics.

(Here come the libertarians. See: Somalia.)

Figure it out.

The privileged among us wish to preserve their privilege. They use their privilege, their wealth, to gain and control access to government, or "power." One way to do that is to control the conversation. Make it toxic. Drive people from the public square.

Us.

"We, the people."

They use fear and division to drive people away from politics, so that they have exclusive access to the offices of government. The broader "national narratives"? Those are manufactured distractions, designed, intended to arouse fears and passions and alienate us from one another.

Everything is political.

"You think that's air you're breathing?"

Again, I'm not arguing that we should be talking about politics all the time. Especially not in the manner that we mostly seem to talk about politics these days. We've lost the ability to have rational conversations about politics. We fall into the traps laid for us by those who would have our voices excluded. The only way to reclaim those voices is to learn how to talk to one another again without making it toxic.

This is getting kind of long, and I'm not sure I'm making anything clearer. But let me conclude by saying that I don't think what Kev has in mind is fairly described as a "community." I'd say it's more like a "salon." An invitation by a host to a venue where the discussion is curated and constrained.

And beneath all of it, the politics of it is ignored, disregarded. By design.

And outside of the salon, the larger community struggles against forces of money and power, wealth and privilege.

Not long ago, I got a call from a Democratic strategist who tried to convince me to run for the Florida House again. I told him that after my experience in the last race, there's no way I'd ever actively enter politics again. People are horrible.

He said that's by design. They intentionally make it that way, to keep people on the sidelines. So that only their chosen favorites, the ones they control, would seek office. They win. (Ironically, was I "chosen"? Maybe. But just because I raised my hand once.)

I think he was right, but I don't regret my choice not to run.

"Do your best. The rest is not up to you."

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:07 Monday, 29 July 2024