should i write more about politics
I care about politics but historically almost never post about it because I can't see any good it will do. If I'm a pop star with a million followers, I could maybe tell my fans hey go vote for Kamala Harris, and then I imagine whether you're in a pop star's fandom is relatively (of course not completely) orthogonal to your political views, so just by the big numbers game, maybe a few people will be my fans and also be in such a politically apathetic environment that no other force is there to sway them? But I don't have a million followers, I'm not going to win the numbers game. Even if I do have a few readers these days, they're mostly my friends or whatever; I'm deep in a bubble.
I could post about elections and topics that actually do seem contentious even within my bubble because the tradeoffs are confusing, and try to advocate for one side or the other, but then usually for the same reason I have no idea if I really want to stand behind the position I end up advocating for; am I being unduly influenced by other people in my bubble? Last year Californian voters voted on Prop 33, a proposition to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, an old law that restricts rent control. Voting yes would allow cities to institute rent control, but might have the second-order effect of causing people to build less housing and rent fewer of their units. What would that do to overall prices and the housing issue more broadly? I'm not here to express a position on Prop 33, just that, from where I am, if I spent more than, say, an hour researching this prop trying to form a well-informed opinion and decide how I personally vote, that doesn't seem very productive; my vote is already so unlikely to affect whether it passes (which is not to say that the probability one's vote makes the difference is the only reason to vote, there are shades of public mandate and such, but it's significant), and it's not like I'm going to post my explanation in a widely read voter guide.
The costs of politics-posting are also kind of vague but a lot closer to home. Frankly, politics these days is unpleasant, and my view is if I were just to write about it without a concrete audience I'm trying to influence to take a concrete action, I'm just spreading misery or even animosity for no reason. Zarquon give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed. It's easy to say truisms like, you can't do the right thing without making some enemies, and abstractly I agree with it, but it still feels bad.
Still... I think maybe this is one of those assumptions I made a long time ago that might have made sense back then but doesn't hold up to scrutiny now. From hanging out in a few call canvassing slacks I learned that calling voters is mostly not about changing anybody's mind, but about convincing people who already weakly agree with you to vote instead of not vote (whether out of apathy or logistical issues), and there are analogously small gradations of persuasion I can plausibly make even in my bubble. I may not be confident in my beliefs on contentious issues, but there are always people out there being more confident and more wrong.
(This is mostly thinking out loud, not an announcement of intent)
(and now for the self-referential rhetorical sucker punch)
I remember when I was in college nearly a decade ago, I went to a call-your-representatives type of event, I think something immigration-related. I was making a call, trying to read from a call script somebody there had given me, and stumbling over my words to the point where the guy on the phone was like "I can tell you're trying to read from a script and failing". I'm pretty sure he didn't say the last part but that was what it felt like. That's just to say, I am familiar with the feeling of absolutely hating phone calls.
That said, the political situation in the U.S. is, to put it mildly, not great, and in the near short term I don't think there's much more I or many others can do that's more effective than making some calls. If you are a U.S. citizen and eligible voter like me you may know that you can find your representative and senator online to call them to express your opinion. I was even lazier and just used 5calls, which has some scripts and also some arguments for why calling is more effective than alternatives. Food for thought...