Anti-Climacus

LINK: Jollyblogger has a link to a nice post on why talking about politics is intellectually shallow. It's perhaps bad for me (considering my future career) that I'm tangentally interested (at best) in what's going on in Washington. Then again, it's probably much, much better for my objectivity as a scholar that I don't really care what policies get enacted*. Me likey:

"Since graduating, I've grown convinced that there is more to life than that. The sound and fury of political debate never leads anywhere nor does it ever accomplish anything, except to produce hurt feelings and cynicism for no appreciable purpose.

Political debate, and by extension politics itself, is an intellectually shallow pursuit. It has to be.
Every day, politicians deal with new scandals, new legislation, and new constituents. To cope with their
constantly changing environment, congressmen, senators and presidents change just as rapidly. This perpetual change does not allow for the reflection necessary for deep thought...

But it's even more disheartening to consider the system's effect on individuals. Despite the intellectual shallowness of politics, smart people flock to Washington by the hundreds of thousands. Yet even though Washington is one of the best-educated cities in the world, the capital produces no great poems or works of art, and true intellectuals either leave in disgust or let the bureaucracy assimilate them. Just because something is shallow doesn't mean it's not dangerous. After all, you can drown in water six inches deep."

*One of the better consolations of realist theories of democracy is that it essentially says politics in America is a giant Markov chain: you get essentially the same result no matter which set of people you're talking about, so the marginal difference between your caring about everything that happens and your only caring about a few things is virtually nonexistent (in fact, the system functions better when you only care about a few things).