Monday, December 9, 2013

What’s Politics Got To Do With It? – redqueeninla

What’s Politics Got To Do With It? – redqueeninla:

What’s Politics Got To Do With It?

Written by redqueeninla in LAUSD



What’s “politics” mean to you, for that matter?  Because it is evidently another of these words for which there are different, loaded meanings to different people, a “buzzword”.
In all honesty, this surprises me; I thought it was fairly straight-forward to know what is “politics”, I did not understand it to be an ambiguous concept.  And while It is clear public respect for congress is rank-bottom, respect for, say, the presidency is not.  And yet confidence in institutions is not the same as respect for a “lifestyle”, and the significance of this to our local neighborhood functioning is important.
To consider yourself as part of a political society, a democracy, requires a respect for the process of politicking.  As citizens of a democratic system we are all each part of that process, at least potentially.  Denying its primacy is simply another form of denying reality.  Politics matters because it affects your life in the here-and-now, but more, feeding an active process with participation influences the shape of that living structure in the future.
A consequence, or perhaps corollary of finding politicians untrustworthy and