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| 6.7.05 |
| how democracy really works |
lately i have received quite a few forwarded email petitions to 'save npr'. in fact, i receive many emails of a political nature from various friends who assume i am with them on the issue. i get a good chuckle out of it because the nature of my inclusive personality means i have friends from all across the political spectrum. many of my christian friends send forwards pleading for me to contact my congressman to ban gay marriage, while others from my environmentalist friends urge me to contact that same congressman to get him to lobby bush to adopt the kyoto protocol. i rarely send any such emails because i now know exactly what happens to them. if they are even read, they get read by an intern who has little knowledge of the issues at stake, nor the power to do anything about it anyway.
people often discount my interest in popular culture as having no relevance to anything of importance*. of course, i strongly disagree with this philosophy. popular culture impacts how we act in life and creates (or arguably, maintains) the social structure that we function in. in this case, democracy. although if we all gave it enough thought we would realize that our one opinion on a political subject has little impact on the outcome of a bill, we still act as though it does. At one point in history (and of course, in theory) our representatives have taken into account our individual opinion, but in practice, it means little.
So why do we continue to act as though it does mean something? because of mr. smith. in the movie mr. smith goes to washington, jimmy stewart is a green senator who defeats the mean, corrupt senators by rallying mom-and-pops in his constituency. the movie hinges on the portrayal that mom-and-pops affected a change in the system. that feeling that capra leaves you with at the end of the movie is the same idealistic emotion that a forwarded political email is attempting to invoke in its reader. but what happens to that email petition that you sign? most of the time an email like that gets a courteous response from the intern or junior staffer and is then deleted. yes, this sounds very pessimistic - but ask yourself why you see my explanation as pessimistic? i argue that it is because of the mr. smith idealism that popular culture feeds to you.
*on a side note, this dynamic is ingeniously illustrated in an episode of king of the hill where bobby joins connie's quiz bowl team as the "pop culture expert" and takes the team to the championship. |
| posted by Paige @ 11:02 AM |
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