Tuesday, September 14, 2004

AARGH! Politics keeps getting brought up in my classes. I hate it!

It's so damn annoying! I mean, I'm taking only two classes slightly related to politics and two not related at all. Yet somehow, I think Bush, the Iraq war, or voting fraud (or a combination) have been brought up in better than 3/4 of all my class periods so far.

And it's not because of what the speakers are saying - I agree with them. I think this country is headed in the wrong direction and it's mostly the fault of Bush and other egomaniacal neo-conservatives. But do we really need to hear about that in a class on Renaissance poetry? Do some people hate this or that politician so much that they can't even go an hour without venting about him? Can't Nathaniel Hawthorn be discussed on his own merits rather than being used to drive home a point about Bush?

I had to think a bit about just why politics in unrelated classes feel so annoying, and this is what I finally came up with. I realize that in some ways, I live in a bubble. Almost everyone around me agrees with me on the basic political issues, and I follow left-wing blogs and commentators a lot more than right-wing ones. But even so, I realize that there are valid disagreements. There are lots of people on the other side of any issue who aren't motivated by greed, stupidity, or malice.

So the way politics keeps getting brought up in class is also off-pissing because it makes the speakers seem so... I don't want to say close-minded, but something like that. Complacent maybe. It's like the speaker just takes for granted that their opinion of Bush is correct, AND that everyone around agrees with them. As if no Bush supporter could possibly be in the same room without them knowing about it. I live in a bubble, but at least I try to do something about it once in a while. So it's frustrating when people act like they don't even know there is a bubble.

Talk about politics all you want. In fact, do it more. People should pay more attention to it. But talk about it in a way that admits the issue isn't already decided.

Edited to make me look smarter on 9-15-04.

No comments: