this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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It's a little counter-intuitive, but she probably feels like she's more helpful in her current role than she would be in politics. A politician has to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning about a lot of different fields, dealing with education, military, civil law, budget, etc etc etc. Where an activist can specialize exclusively in one thing, gaining a lot of clout and helping provide leadership.
Global climate activism has long needed a leader, its own Mahatma Gandhi. Now its getting one, and it leaves her very, very influential. She can't be thrown out of office either, she could only be assassinated, which would turn her into a martyr like Navalny. So, she's steadily growing powerful and is virtually unstoppable right now.
She probably wants to keep it that way. Getting elected would derail that a little bit, and having these kinds of non-governmental civil leaders is actually very important.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they'll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder "why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me."
Additionally, since they're also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they'll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people's perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And that's just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that's inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It's just that everything else is a lot worse.
Note, I said "some". If you think they are all terrible, you've likely been propagandized. I also said they're jacks-of-all-trades, I never said they know more than a specialist about that specialist's field. This is why they need to consult specialists. What they do know is things outside of that specialist's field. Say, they know more about governmental budgeting than a doctor would. They know more about medicine than an economist would.
And again, some. They're not all the same, that's a gross and inaccurate oversimplification based on emotion.
I don't think its glamorizing to point out some of the nuances in the job itself. And they're not all in some grand conspiracy or something. You can understand why a good one believes as they do, if you put in the work. You just need to learn enough about the issue to become somewhat fluent in it. Say, covid vaccines or something.
Real information, though, not just emotionally-digestible good-sounding information. It takes actual hard work, like classroom-style.
That's why I just explained that you can understand exactly why they have the positions they do, if you simply put in the work to do so. We run into trouble, however, when people try to understand without putting in that hard work.
Then people begin to just apply blanket assumptions across the whole profession, like "politicians bad" or whatever. In real life, nothing is quite that simple.
But to really "get it", you need to pay quite a lot of attention to voting patterns, as well as work to understand whatever issue is important to you. A good politician, which do exist, has done that work. A citizen that does not will not necessarily understand it, however.
You've mischaracterized me several times now. I think the reason that is happening is because I'm challenging a worldview that you hold. Not because I am actually doing any of the things you claim.
Lastly, Einstein's Relativity in both its forms is extremely misunderstood. People think they get it, but they're just wrong. Really understanding it comes in around 2nd-3rd year of college level physics. It's not E=mc^2, that's pop science. When it comes to a politician, they can spend their time teaching you, which is really the job of a teacher, or they can spend their time teaching themselves what is necessary to do their jobs.
It's easy to wish for the world to be simple, like in a video game or movie. But its really horrendously complicated, just about all the time. You can understand this yourself, if you put in the degree of hard work that is necessary. Economics? Complicated as fuck. Geopolitics? Complicated as fuck. Psychology? Complicated as fuck. It is not your politicians' jobs to teach you these things, that's the job of university professors, mainly.
I'm not assuming anything. I have a broad knowledge base that I put a lot of work in for, over a lot of years, and I like a handful of politicians that vote as I believe a knowledgeable person should vote. I'm not "guessing" like some random kid would need to. I'm not using my feelings.
I'm against trickle-down-economics, for instance, because I've spent hours and hours poring through really dry, boring shit. So I don't need to guess that it boosts corporate profits in the short term, but does not measurably improve life for the working class.
I don't need to assume anything, because I put in work a long time ago.
When it comes to something I don't understand as well, say, global trade, I just don't keep a strong opinion. Then I vote based on those things I understand. Feelings and assumptions and trust don't belong in politics. Facts and hard work and not having an undeserved opinion are what belong.
Note, I've never asked you to assume politicians are good or something, have I? I've simply described the necessities of the job. But you really didn't like that I guess, you maybe think "a normal guy" could do better? And no "normal people" ever run or something?
When did I ever say they have insider knowledge that I cannot receive? I mean, for starters they absolutely do, they have access to intelligence reports and various classified things that would be illegal for me to see. But that's mainly just to do with the military, so whatever.
But I haven't been talking about any insider knowledge, just you have. I've been talking about issues, and the importance of having to actually work at getting an understanding.
There are only issues, and solutions. That's it. Also known as policy ideas. Should taxes be higher or lower. What percent. Tiered or flat. Etc etc etc. It's not mysterious or magical. It's just complicated, but you can learn it all if you put some work in.
How about immigration? How about education funding? How about welfare reform? They're just issues dude, solved with things like laws and policies. You need to learn them, not just handwave shit away as "ooooh insider knowledge is good/bad/whatever". You want to generalize it seems, but you shouldn't. Everything is specific, its own rabbit hole to be learned. Knowing one does not mean you know others. They're like subjects in school. If you get really good at math, then you know a lot of math. You can even judge if a math teacher is a good math teacher or not. It doesn't make you know history though.
That's like a politician. If you know a lot about immigration policy, you can judge which politicians are good at it, and which are fucking garbage. This is smart to do, so you know.
You should know which ones are good and bad. If you don't, that's not their fault, it's yours. That's commonly called a "civic duty", to understand the issues in your country. At least somewhat, you know? Nobody has time to become a real expert. But you can become fluent.
Okay, when did I say they had unique knowledge then? Asides classified stuff, that doesn't count. You keep saying that. I keep saying it's not unique, you just don't want to go learn it.
So, they sometimes actually do explain things, Katie Porter for instance was pretty well-known for going into detail. Did you ever try listening to her, assuming you're American? Did you watch Biden's recent State of the Union? He explained several policy plans he has, though not in particularly great detail, it was just a speech. Do you listen, ever?
The main problem is you seem to expect them to come to you, wherever your media bubble is, and teach you everything. That's again, not their job. It's not their purpose. All the time they spend campaigning, trying to convince Joe-schmoe to vote for them, is time they aren't doing their actual jobs of governing the country.
Again, they're not teachers. They're not salesmen. We do not vote for people to teach us, we should not vote for them to sell themselves to us. We vote for them to make our rules. They already campaign way too fucking much.
That's almost what Jon Stewart said about him running for office. He feels he does more useful work outside of politics.