Politics seem quite useless to me in their current incarnation. When I look at the practical value of politics, it is to inspire people to be a better person. The reason you should be informed about politics is to know who to vote for. I can’t imagine anyone saying that is what we are doing today.
Awesome Leaders
Does anyone view the people they vote for as leaders in any way whatsoever?
I can’t imagine that most politicians are inspiring people towards greatness. They might be great people, but it doesn’t mean they are great leaders.
It seems that the job of a politician is to raise money. Their second duty is to show up to votes. Then their third duty is to vote in a way that the people who elected them want.
It is pretty clear to me that politics has devolved into raising money being the primary job of a politician.
Inspired People
Does anyone who follows politics in any way feel like it is enriching their lives right now? Do they feel better for knowing the things that they do?
The game of politics has nothing to do with what actual optimal policy involves.
You have to ask yourself a few questions. How does knowing about politics improve my life? How do these leaders in my society inspire me? Am I a better person for knowing these things?
I can’t imagine the answer to that is yes. Knowing about politics means you can vote to try to shape society to be one you enjoy living in more. If you are doing anything beyond that, it is just for fun.
I hope you’re having fun with politics.
Useful Outcomes
The thing that is amazing to me is the focus on national politics. The individual has almost no impact on national politics normally. Local politics, you can have an impact on.
Even in a fairly large city, when there is no federal election there might only be 10,000 votes for a winning candidate. If you know 100 people in the city, and you can influence them, that is 1% of the total votes a candidate would receive.
It is so unlikely you influence someone to vote in a federal election in a different way than they plan. It may be possible in a local election.
The things that happen locally actually impact you more than federally as well.
Why Federal is so Popular
It is easy for a story to be made from federal politics. You can write about those politics and the audience is the whole United States along with some people internationally.
If you write about local politics, your audience is only the people who are in the area of the election. The more local you get, the more impact a single person can have. That locality also means you will have less coverage and lower quality coverage where it does exist in many cases.
Evaluate Your Life
Do things that are useful to you and those around you. Spend your time doing things that make you happy.
People have replaced religion with ideology. They have replaced sports with politics.
Ask yourself what positive impacts you have had from politics that you couldn’t get from sports. If the answer is none, I can’t imagine why you are doing it so fervently.
I wasted a lot of time on politics for a while trying to understand it. It is a useless examination, since at the level of politics there is no understanding. You have to go deeper and leave that realm of inquiry. Psychology, sociology, and philosophy are useful for understanding people’s political views.
Politics are for politicians. Do something more useful.