I’ll just leave this here.
Too many words… could I get a summary please
clt assumes this is about our athletic program?
There’s more to life than national politics. The amount of time devoted to national politics (Tv, print media, hemming and hawing on social media) is staggering compared to the impact on everyday life.
If people are so worried about their lives they should vote in local elections, but we know they don’t actually care given the abysmal turnouts (15-20% most years). Instead, they’re just addicted to the consumption of political media.
[quote=“NLP, post:4, topic:31203”]There’s more to life than national politics. The amount of time devoted to national politics (Tv, print media, hemming and hawing on social media) is staggering compared to the impact on everyday life.
If people are so worried about their lives they should vote in local elections, but we know they don’t actually care given the abysmal turnouts (15-20% most years). Instead, they’re just addicted to the consumption of political media.[/quote]
This, over and over again.
Local elections impact your local tax rate, your utilities rates (if you live in the city), school schedules, development through zoning policy, the list goes on and on.
I think we are more drawn to the national political scene because it’s inherently sexier. It’s been shaped as an “us vs them” battle by both sides. There’s a lot of good studies on the futility of using actual logic to convince someone of your political opinion because it is inherently an emotional and identity conflict. I read a study recently that showed that people don’t initially believe in limited government and then decide to join the republican party or believe in more government intervention and then join the democrat party, but people first socially identify with whichever group and then after a period of immersion become believers in that group’s core ideologies. Sometimes, and even more often now, people socially identify with said particular group but never end up adopting that group’s core policies. E.g. self identified conservatives are now just as likely to be opposed to free trade policies (and in one recent poll actually more likely to oppose free trade) as self identified progressives.
TLDR: people are super irrational and gravitate towards hyper emotional situations that don’t effect them nearly as much as they think they do
[quote=“NLP, post:4, topic:31203”]There’s more to life than national politics. The amount of time devoted to national politics (Tv, print media, hemming and hawing on social media) is staggering compared to the impact on everyday life.
If people are so worried about their lives they should vote in local elections, but we know they don’t actually care given the abysmal turnouts (15-20% most years). Instead, they’re just addicted to the consumption of political media.[/quote]
I agree. For the most part national politics impacts me very little. No matter the POTUS, etc I just keep keeping on. We had a local election a couple weeks ago. I asked several people that are ALWAYS talking politics if they voted. They all said no. I just shook my head and walked away.
State elections and SCOTUS at the national level drive a lot of my political thoughts. I’m not in a city, but there are some county issues that of course matter as well.
I think age has a lot to do with how interested and involved people are in local versus national politics. Media plays a part in getting the message out, but you have to be really careful as all media outlets push their own agenda. I am a republican as that tends to be more in line with my views, but I will vote democrat for local elections often. My uncle runs on a democratic ticket for county commissioner as many republicans are democrats from the early to mid 1900’s. The problem with the higher elections is that the candidates tend to go way over to each side probably to appease those that shout the loudest. I think most of us are more in the middle. So it makes us choose who we think is the lesser of two evils in our minds.