Eitan Hersh is a political science professor. Like me, he is surrounded by people who follow and talk politics incessantly.
Yet also, like me, he became dissatisfied with just talking about it.
Worse, he noticed that when you are trying to organize a practical action to actually get candidates elected and bills passed, the people most informed about national politics are often no help.
Moreover, they can talk national polls, but don't really know anything about the politics of their own community -- where their involvement could make a real difference.
Hersh has concluded that this intense involvement in following political news is best understood as a hobby -- on the same order as fishing or model railroading or Star Trek cosplay. And that is fine as a leisure pursuit.
But political hobbyism misleads us into thinking that it contributes to the actual aim of politics: to gain power in order to make things better for citizens.
I feel the indictment in Hersh's stories. I am moved to take more practical political action.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
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