The Politics of Hopelessness, Skepticism, and Dropping Out
Who can’t understand why people are frustrated, skeptical, fed up? We have two political parties with a monopoly on politics that are dominated by corporate interests. We often find ourselves voting for the least awful alternative, not a candidate who courageously champions our interests. We hear the label “liberal” used of people who barely lean left and often tilt to the right, who readily seem to cave in to the right-wing in order to get re-elected. We desperately want to believe in someone. So we scrounge around like abused spouses clinging to anything that tells us they’re for us, that their critics don’t understand. We make excuses for their failures to stand boldly against the opposition. We tell ourselves to be realists because it’s really, really, really the best they can accomplish “given the state of politics.” Such feelings are widespread. In terms of the corporate world, for example, a recently released Gallup poll conducted in 2011 indicates that about two in