Political Burnout: It Happens to the Best of Us (And the Worst)
I did not edit this. It was a free write. I’m worn out. Please be gentle.
I stood on the corner of Anchorage’s Park Strip at a protest with my mom. I was maybe 10 at the time and we held signs that read “NO WAR FOR OIL” in our cold-stung hands. Around the same time, I started a composting can in my fourth-grade classroom, cultivating worms from my own yard to work in a plastic system I designed myself. It would be only a few short years later when I would make phone calls for Barack Obama’s campaign and visit Washington D.C. on a student ambassador trip for school.
Currently, I’m sitting on the couch on my mother’s basement under a fleece blanket. I have been here for the better part of four hours doing next to nothing aside from thinking about writing this. I live in Los Angeles now, but am in Alaska for the holidays. I’m much older. Barack Obama is not the president anymore. I don’t think I’d go to the Park Strip in Anchorage to protest much of anything. And the last time I went to Washington, D.C., I was so hungover that I almost threw up at the Lincoln Memorial (and that’s no disrespect to our 16th president; it’s just the truth).
Based on how I was groomed, I should be on my way to becoming a senator or something right now, but like many of my contemporaries, the light that was my potential flickered brightly and then burned TF out. I’m tired, man. I don’t have time to argue or pound out tweets or yammer on the phone to someone who does not give a shit. Do you want to know what that 16-year-old that used to be me became? A FREAKING FASHION MODEL, BRO. And I’m proud of that.
Politics do not interest me anymore. A once admitted news junkie, I cannot bear to think about turning on the news. Overconsumption usually fills me with rage and it’s a zero-sum game. Shoot, I don’t even watch Stephen Colbert and he used to be MY SHIT.
Last November, on election day, I spent over six hours watching bail hearings take place at the Anchorage Jail. I’d like to say this is because I was a justice major and a career in law entices me (both of which are true), but the ACTUAL truth is: I was going to bail out my father. He had been arrested for charges that have since been dropped, but essentially a police officer made an address error and my father spent the night in a holding cell. While there, the bail hearings broke my heart. A man had been kicked out of the mental hospital and forced to spend the night in a holding cell, as well. He had obvious anger issues, was not completely coherent, and was told he could leave the jail, but would have to stay out on the streets. This is an obviously broken system. But I felt helpless. All while this is happening, politicians are being elected onto my hometown’s city council, posturing, posing, and drinking the night away. It made my stomach turn.
On a national level, the debates have been a pissing contest of the worst kind. I once believed that a good citizen had a responsibility to and tuned into watching people attack character and policy on television, but now I can’t be bothered to judge anyone for not doing so, no less bother to do so myself.
“Did you hear about blah blah blah?”
No.
“Can you believe POLITICIAN said *this*?”
Yes.
Nothing surprises me anymore. It’s not that I’m apathetic; I’m helpless. My vote does not feel like it goes anywhere. As a woman in this country, I watched a man who admitted he grabbed women by their pussies (HIS WORDS!) take the highest office and I was supposed to feel a fire light under my ass after? Absolutely not. I didn’t fold, either. I simply don’t want to get upset anymore.
What does fighting on Facebook do? Nothing. Do I change minds? No. Do I change hearts? Hell no. “Consuming information is not the same as being informed.” So you have a soapbox now? Twitter is a soapbox? Facebook is a soapbox? Being depressed and overconsuming shit that makes you feel like the world is one giant doom is a soapbox? No, thanks.
I try to do my best in my day to day life. I make a genuine effort to be kind and understanding and patient and whatever is virtuous so that MYSELF and OTHERS can live harmoniously or whatever.
There are a lot of people like me — who maybe had a bit more passion than we have right now, but life came around and there was a lot of defeat and we focused the scope in. What can I do to make the world a better place? How do I start? Here. With myself. In my circle. Anything else is just politics. And we’re burnt the fuck out.
