How more of us got back in the game

Kostadis Roussos
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

Mr. Pincus’ and Mr. Hoffman’s recent entry into politics is a huge relief, because it’s part of a trend of a lot of my very capable friends who ignored politics for a long time.

Too many of us were spending too much time building a better world, thinking the political process would take care of itself. We never imagined that politicians would burn the world down for power.

There was a meme where folks in Silicon Valley ignored Washington because Silicon Valley saw it as irrelevant.

Uber is a consequence of our attitude to politics. Politics prevented the right thing from happening, so we would blitz through it like some dying old tech dinosaur. Uber confirmed our beliefs that we could bend Washington to our will.

Except we can’t.

And we are beginning to realize that if we want to have a say in how this country gets run, we have to be in the room where it matters.

I have spent the last twenty years observing the train wreck that is the Republican party.

This began in 1996 when I read this book:

The hypocrisy, the criminality, and the willfulness to ignore science or reason in the pursuit of power lead me to calling the Republican Party, a Communist Party.

A communist party requires that it’s members say the sky is green if the party says the sky is green. Loyalty and orthodoxy are more important than fact.

And can anyone in good conscience say that a party that denies global warming as every prediction comes true is anything but a communist party?

And for 21 years, I watched as everyone just ignored this trend. As my friends said “They are all the same” when I told them that the Republicans are not a normal party. As too many smart people felt that politics were messy and that everyone is corrupt and everyone is the same.

The South Park creators typified this insanity. They said that elections are between a douche bag and a turd sandwich and your vote doesn’t matter. But votes matter. And there are real choices. Ask anyone about to lose their health care. Or children who are suddenly without parents because of ICE agents who have new priorities.

And I would scream “but they are not” and I would be branded an ignorant partisan hack. And so I gave up saying anything.

And that was a mistake.

What is going on now is what happens when we, and I include myself, hope that politics will just take care of itself.

We left the field for too long to other smart people like the Koch’s and randroids and racists and flat-earthers. And they took advantage of our unwillingness to get involved.

The progressive left would like us to just give money to them and to trust them to do the right thing.

That’s the worst thing we can do.

The best we can do is to become actively involved, to realize that if we want this country to reflect what we want, we are going to have to make a stand and say what we believe. And that will mean that people will hate and love us, and because we stood up, we will get a chance to influence the outcome.

This country and planet can’t outsource the problems of the next hundred years to others. We have to be actively involved in solving them.

Seeing so many people who in the past would right a check to the right lobbyist or ignore politics decide to be involved directly is a good thing.

We need more people like Mark and Reid. And we need to encourage more of them to join.

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