By apolitical I don’t mean just those who are skeptical or don’t care much about politics but those who completely don’t give a crap about politics and don’t vote at all, and so on.
I won’t say I don’t care, because I do. But I have no particular loyalty to any given party. I’m interested in what can be done, not who wants to do it.
I vote but have no expectation of things ever changing. I think when we vote we’re just voting for which party we want to screw us over.
I have voted once,for George the 1st,don’t ever plan to again.
+1 or politician if you don’t vote along party lines
I voted for Clinton in 92, haven’t since. My wife was extremely encouraging of me to register and vote for Obama, and I would have, but circumstances prevented it.
I fucking despise politics and politicians, but am kind of afraid of the American public these days…
Joe
I suspect most of what few there may be hang out in GQ.
Pretty much. And every year and every month that goes by I feel it more. People say “vote” and it will change everything, but that’s pretty much bullshit. People with money run everything and the rest of us can go fuck ourselves.
Sometimes I think I am slowly becoming that way. I care less and less as time goes by.
I vote, but capriciously.
Never voted or even registered to vote. I will only vote if I see a politician worthy of taking office. I do read some political news, but in the same way that I read the results of the Special Olympics.
Working for a city, seeing politics and politicians at close range, made me swear off from it.
After voting for a 3rd party candidate in many consecutive presidential elections, I let my gf talk me into voting for Obama. Some of his campaign promises actually caught my attention. Then it turns out that those campaign promises weren’t serious.
I don’t believe it matters who is President, so I don’t vote.
To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
In order to avoid being lynched by a mob of geeks, these are Douglas Adams’s words, not mine. But I echo the sentiment.
Never voted, never registered. Don’t watch the news or read the paper (the news part at least). If I cared any less, I wouldn’t even know there was such a thing as politics.
I vote, but I have less than zero desire to talk about politics with anybody either online or in real life. So for all intents and purposes, I’m apolitical.
Voted once in my entire life, but only because I was in college and everyone else was heading down to the polls and I didn’t want to be sitting there explaining myself.
I’ve really never paid attention to anything political nor do I really care to. Mostly because it seems to me the really big stuff that gets discussed on TV and in the newspaper is one thing but it’s the minutia that happens behind the scenes that’s the driving force behind everything (but I could be very wrong about this). Also, I can’t stand that way people are so aligned with their ‘side’ and just assume the other side is always wrong and won’t even hear them out…to the point that they don’t even know what they other side is saying.
Back when people were marching on Madison to protest Walker wanting to bust the teacher’s Union, I often wondered how many of these students had any idea what would happen if they ‘won’? Were they paying attention to the news or did they just hear “Walker wants to bust up the unions” and headed out for the streets?
Now, I’m just using that as an example and I’m not really looking to debate it. In general, I don’t mind talking about politics but more from an educational POV then from the POV of planning to vote. I don’t mind hearing about what a certain politician has done or is planning to do, but I want to know WHY they did it? Is there more to it then just because it’s going to put money in his pocket or because it’s going to get him re-elected or because ‘he’s stupid and doesn’t know what he’s doing’?
The other reason I stay out of it is because I get so sick of how many people are totally ignorant on the issues. For example, when Wisconsin was discussing high speed rail, the feds gave us the money, Walker gave it back. I heard so many people talking about what a moron he was was and how he should at least use that money for new roads (or education or something else…it’s ‘free money!!1!’). These people weren’t paying attention. How many times does the news have to say that the money is for high speed rail or nothing? That’s it. If you don’t put in high speed rail, you don’t get the money, period. And yet you keep hearing people bashing Walker for giving the money back instead of using it for something else. Pisses me off…and that’s why I just keep out of it.
I know I sound like I’m defending Walker, they were just the two things that popped into my head, mainly because they’re similar in that they both about people that are so aligned with their side it’s like they have blinders on.
I feel increasingly like I’m getting there, especially at the national and state level. Lately politics just seems like theater, and bad theater at that. It’s one of those reality TV shows where all the “contestants” are acting as outrageously as possible in order to score the most screen time.
I used up all my caring on the last crisis. I talked about it with my friends, got in some interesting conversations on Facebook, tried to learn about the issue so that I could have an informed opinion on it. Then it was all resolved at the eleventh hour in some backroom deal and breezed through passage with hardly another mention.
The funniest thing is: I honestly cannot remember what the issue was. I tried Googling headlines over the past six months or so, and I’ve drawn a complete blank.
I’ve quit listening to news over the past few months, and I honestly feel so uninformed. I just can’t stand hearing about the debt ceiling. I’m totally turned off from politics. I don’t want to know about it, I don’t want to vote, I don’t think it matters. It makes me feel sad to feel this way, too. I feel as though I should care, as though I’m responsible for caring.
I vote with no expectation of having any impact whatsoever. I just do it for a clear conscience. I feel that both parties are fueled by the same corporations and dollars, so does it really matter? No one seems to want to upset the status quo from one administration to the next.
This reminds me of another thing. As far as I can tell, I can be the most informed citizen in the US, or I could literally live under a rock, it’s not going to make a difference. The politicians will do what they will do and I’ll have to follow the rules they make.
Also, and I know this sounds ignorant, as a 30 year old middle class straight white male, I can’t think of anything they’ve done (short of sales tax increases and one small SS tax decrease) that’s had any real effect on my life so far.