Do You Have A Minute?
There must be an election coming up soon. Or maybe every summer is like this: Whenever I pass through commuter nodes, there are fresh-faced, enthusiastic youths with identical t-shirts and clipboards. And they say things like “Do you have a minute for Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party?”
I’ve got an answer - but I don’t ever say it out loud, I just smile and keep walking , perhaps convincing them that I’m a foreigner who doesn’t want to struggle with English - “Yeah. I’ve got a minute for him in November.”
Okay, so obviously, I’m left-leaning. And if I want to risk having the guy I vote for win, Obama is probably my guy. As a registered voter in the District of Columbia, there probably isn’t anything I can do to prevent a Democrat from winning. I would have to go campaign in Virginia, Ohio, or Florida… Wherever some electoral votes can be swung. But you might have figured out by now that I’m not going to do that.
I’m going to steer clear of conspiracy theory in the following analysis. But, now that I mention it, what I want to say is probably the rational core of what could be spun out into a conspiracy theory.
I hate a world where showing a little interest gets you put on a list. Machinery kicks in, and suddenly you start getting junk mail and more phone calls. I want to be able to flirt with ideas and not have it come back to haunt me. I’m very adventurous in my mind. Less so in life. In my mind, I am less often sucked in; less often shackled to an idea. In life, that is a palpable fear. I actually like to discuss things without coming to any conclusion. People hate that when they have an agenda; when all they care about is brainwashing you. It is so pervasive that I have come to expect it from the very ideas I identify with. Just because I identify doesn’t make me an ideologue. I’m not about to go to war for a platform of ideas just because I agree with a few.
People are desperate to tag you with metadata. We used to say “pigeonhole you”. Getting pigeonholed, or tagged with inappropriate labels is promptly entered into a database somewhere, and you’ll never hear the end of it. It’s “going on you permanent record”. That is a real turn-off for me.
Is it the databases that are to blame? More likely, it’s the particular way we have come to rely on them. Blind faith in the power of machines.
I almost want to engage one of the DNC kids. But oddly, it wouldn’t shut them up. They would still try to accost me every time, a practically unlimited supply of interchangeable exuberance to find me outside the subway stop downtown. I’m not serious. I will feel guilty for wasting their time. And, that’s when I’m going to cave in and agree to something I won’t want to do later. Persuasion works on me. But, it ‘works’ only to produce utterances - and maybe actions - I will recant. I will distort myself that much to get around you.
Posted by Evan Bittner Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:22:00 GMT
