infobong.com

On Sunday morning I returned from the gym to find voter registration forms hanging on each of the doors of my building. When our doors were leafeted two weeks ago, I appreciated the effort, and dug up my voter registration card. But it seemed like a waste of energy in a safe Republican state and a safe Democratic house district. (Thanks to the summer's redistricting, I live in a district that extends from East Austin to the Mexican border.) I'm sure some great kids are - like me - really upset about the current political climate, and feel compelled to take action. But engaging my gentrifying neighborhood in a get-out-the-vote campaign? It seems like there are more productive ways to work out this impetus, and I'm not sure what.

I have a whole raft of issues with the Democratic party, and I won't waste our energy elaborating them when you can go read The Nation. And I have problems with "social movements" and their skepticism of the government and the political process. I do think there are a lot of radicals who quickly dismiss institutions as racist, elitist, and sexist - and engage in a intellectually lazy anti-authoritarianism. They fail to recognize the demands placed on government and political systems or the difficulty with which systems evolve. I don't deny that our political system is racist, elitist, sexist, and increasingly difficult to reform, but the existing institutions will better equipped to deal with the needs of our society than ripping them out and replacing them with new ones. Would we expect that people new to government would be effective at maintaining roads, managing health care, or maintaining order? These are complex subject are that I'm sure require a lot of wisdom that comes from experience.