Exhausted by Politics? That’s the Point
Should you check out when that’s what they want you to do?
Americans love to hate politics.
This is a little weird in a democracy, especially in one of the world’s oldest and most prominent ones. We talk a lot about freedom and liberty and whatnot and we take pride in the fact that we have a democracy, but many Americans turn our noses up at actually engaging in our democratic processes.
A recent Pew survey found that “When asked to sum up their feelings about politics in a word or phrase, very few (2%) use positive terms; 79% use negative or critical words, with ‘divisive’ and ‘corrupt’ coming up most frequently.” More than half of respondents could not or would not name one strength of the American political system — not even “voting is nice” or “checks and balances are good.”
Interestingly, negativity toward politics is one of the points of consensus in America. We can’t agree on much, but we can agree that we hate politics. Pew says that:
These views and other negative sentiments are widely shared among older and younger Americans, White, Black, Hispanic and Asian adults, people who are highly engaged in politics and those who are less engaged. And in most cases, the partisan differences in these attitudes are relatively modest.
