"Political hobbyists" click, tweet and moan to their friends - instead of engaging widely with citizens. Which isn't doing politics
“American Power”, by Tristan Eaton
A fascinating and challenging article from the US publication, Boston Review, which urges us to make the distinction between real political action and “political hobbyism”.
The opening section, describing a typical American small-town civic scene, makes the point clearly:
On a Wednesday evening this past June, a volunteer political organization was holding its monthly meeting in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
Lemonade and cookies were set up in the back of a borrowed meeting room, a few blocks from the center of town, and a few young children milled around as fifty adults made their way to large round conference tables.
The organization, like similar ones around the country, was formed in the aftermath of the 2016 election to support Democratic candidates and progressive causes. It was now planning its next moves.
Greensburg, which is an hour southeast of Pittsburgh, is the seat of Westmoreland County. Over the past twenty years, Westmoreland has gone from a politically split county to a Republican stronghold. Two out of every three of the 182,000 votes cast in 2016 went to Donald Trump.
The monthly meeting is a temporary liberal oasis here. A few dozen people with left-leaning policy views briefly enjoy a sense of camaraderie that they rarely get to experience outside this room. Everywhere else they go—work, church, school, among their neighbors—their political views are abnormal.
One man, a new face to the group, lingered at the back of the room as the leaders in front made announcements. He seemed apprehensive and serious, maybe sad.
About fifty years old with a thick beard, he wore a T-shirt with a slogan that professed his love of drinking, and he chose to sit at the rearmost chair at the rearmost table in the room.
When a young organizer asked everyone at the table to introduce themselves, the man said he is a Republican and a Christian, as well as the father of a child serving in the military. He also said he’s pro-life and one of those two out of three voters in the county who supported Trump for president in 2016.
A couple of people shifted in their seats, unsure where this introduction was going, worried that this rare hour in which they were surrounded by fellow liberals was about to be disrupted.
The man continued, almost mournfully, “I’m a Christian, and there’s no such thing as a racist Christian.” That’s why he was there, he explained. He felt that his own small community is going down a path of hatred and, as a Christian, he needed to take a stand.
Even though he disagreed with the other people in this room issue by issue, he said, he was there to learn about the group and maybe to contribute to its work.
He was there because Donald Trump doesn’t represent his Christian values. He then offered advice about how the group can better approach people who are like him, remaining visibly uncomfortable through the whole meeting even though the group welcomed him.
The man traveled a long political distance to be there that night, but his presence was not an accident; it was a triumph. The group’s leaders have been working for over two years, slowly building support and training volunteers to win over people exactly like him.
In a county that could hardly be more hostile to their views, they have had a remarkable string of successes. The successes were hard-earned through many evenings of their lives, miles of door-to-door canvasses, and stumbling blocks along the way as they learned how to build an organization from scratch.
They did this work—and continue to do it—for one reason: they want power.
When ordinary Americans volunteer in politics, they are trying to acquire power. Each voter they convince is a small piece of that power. Accumulated votes translate into politicians and policies advancing their values.
If the group in Westmoreland County can convince this man to join them—if they can help him convince other members of his family and religious network to vote a certain way—the group might be able to change dozens of votes that they couldn’t change without him.
Each vote may seem like an insignificant drop in a 135-million-vote bucket, but the group labors with the knowledge that it is working in concert with like-minded organizations across the state and country each doing its part.
The group also knows, and sees, that opposing groups, with very different values, are also getting supporters for the other side. They are in a pitched battle with one another, each seeking political control.
What they’re all doing, that’s politics.
I often think of groups like this during evenings I spend on my couch. As I fold laundry half-heartedly, I watch TV and clutch my phone. I refresh my Twitter feed to keep up on the latest political crisis, then toggle over to Facebook to read clickbait news stories, then over to YouTube to see a montage of juicy clips from the latest congressional hearing. I then complain to my family about all the things I don’t like that I have seen.
What I’m doing, that isn’t politics.
Most of us are engaging with politics to satisfy our own emotional needs and intellectual curiosities. That’s political hobbyism.
What I’m doing I call political hobbyism, a catchall phrase for consuming and participating in politics by obsessive news-following and online “slacktivism,” by feeling the need to offer a hot take for each daily political flare-up, by emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens or with earphones on.
I am in good company: these behaviors represent how most “politically engaged” Americans spend their time on politics.
In 2018, I asked a representative sample of Americans to estimate about how much time they spend on any kind of political-related activity in a typical day. A third of Americans say they spend two hours or more each day on politics.
Of these people, four out of five say that not one minute of that time is spent on any kind of real political work. It is all TV news and podcasts and radio shows and social media and cheering and booing and complaining to friends and family.
Political hobbyists tend to be older than the general public, though they are found in all age groups. They are disproportionately college educated, male, and white. In the current climate, they are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans or independents.
Not only are they different from the general public, they also have a different profile from people who engage actively in political organizations. For example, of the people who spend two hours a day on politics but no time on volunteering, 56 percent are men. But of those who spend that much time on politics, with at least some of it spent volunteering, 66 percent are women.
Those who volunteer, such as the group in Westmoreland County that is out convincing neighbors to vote and to advocate, have something to show for their commitment to their political values. As for the rest of us, all we have is a sinking feeling of helplessness in the face of overwhelming challenge.
The writer, Eitan Hersh, goes on to outline the research for his claims, one of the facts being that college-educated Americans are the worst hobbyists: “in how they consume news, identify as partisans, and engage from the sidelines, well-educated Americans now tend to treat politics as if it were a game.”
She concludes:
If we cast blame for political dysfunction on the media, on gerrymandering, on attempts at voter disenfranchisement, on wealthy political donors, on the Electoral College, on unapologetic racists, it’s hard to see how ordinary citizens could do much. But that’s awfully convenient; I believe that our own behavior demands at least as much reform as any political institution.
If you feel unfulfilled, melancholy, paralyzed by the sadness of the news and depth of our political problems, there is an alternative: actually doing politics. Citizens who want to empower their political values would be better off if they spent less time consuming politics as at-home amateurs and instead fell in line to help strengthen organizations and leaders.
Rather than kibitzing with their social media friends, they could adopt some of the spirit of the party regulars, counting votes and building interpersonal relationships in their neighborhoods.
Remarkable Americans across the country are currently coming together to do just that, and they are making strides for their vision of what ought to be. In many cases, these volunteers are spending the same amount of time on politics as the hobbyists, but the volunteers are redirecting their political energy toward serving the material and emotional needs of their neighbors.
If the typical engaged voters found meaning and pride in organizing ten, twenty, or a hundred voters instead of in dissecting the latest Washington controversy, they too would find redemption in politics as a service to others, a form of politics where participants get power to improve their communities, present and future.