Primary school

On the eve of Super Tuesday last night, I sat in the family room of my college pad with a housemate. We were talking about the magnitude and excitement of this day, and we pined for the impending political climate. Will Ron Paul finally drop out? Will Barry Obama finally get caught smoking a stress-cig? Will Hillary finally reveal herself as a Fem-bot?

It was Monday, only a day after the Super Bowl, but Tuesday — to us — was full of more intrigue and drama. 

 

And then another, less politically aware roommate, entered the fray. 

"What are you guys talking about?" He asked, innocently enough. We explained we were discussing Super Tuesday, and we said we were excited for the event and we assumed he understood.

"Super Tuesday..." He said with a pause. "Is that like Big Monday? Is it basketball?"

The point here is not to degrade my fellow Americans, or even my fellow housemates. In fact, I want to hold this housemate up as an accurate portrayal of many citizens in the United States: We don't know anything about politics.

Nothing.

And you know what? It might not be our fault.

Do you know what a caucus is? How do Obama and Hillary differ on the "issues"? What are the "issues"? What are delegates? How are candidates elected? What is an "endorsement?" What is the electoral college?

Believe it or not, your humble narrator (me) does know the answers to these questions (Well, mostly enough — that is). I got here via an obsession (and near fetish) for information. I have attacked Slate.com, CNN.com, Salon.com, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (you get the picture) with the paranoid energy of a suspicious ex-boyfriend.

But do you know the answers to these key questions? And if you don't, would you know where to find them? Are the answers readily available?

My point is that, more often than not, politics seems like an exclusive club available only to information-elites. It is a competitive and morally depraved legion, one where information-oneupsmanship runs rampant. You must endure a grueling initiation process, but once you're here, you're family. You're part of the mob. And if you're not one of us, you're one of them.

And what about them? Aren't they cast-off, and forced to politically-starve? Don't these people account for at least three-quarters of our society? Some may be informed, but couldn't they be even more educated? Isn't it our responsibility to offer the basic information? Won't this affect the future of our country? Or our children's country?

The media has a tendency to gloss over the foundation of politics, the nuts-and-bolts, the "yeah, no shit!" information. Why? Because information elites are unwilling to put their political capital on the line by offering remedial information. We see brief, watered-down explanations to some of our questions, but they're still ambiguous, or buried in the paper. 

Bottom line? The important information is shrouded in a cloud of mystery. When it's too difficult to access, we give up. And when we give up, everyone suffers.

So instead of focusing on voting records and "the issues," we start to focus on the personality traits of the candidates. Don't get me wrong, turn on Fox News and chances are great a genuine political report will be airing. Turn over to MSNBC, and perhaps Obama is defending his honor by pointing out he voted against the Iraq War. But are the people who matter most, and know the least, are they watching these shows?

No, no, no. All of a sudden, we are talking about John Edwards' haircut, or Obama's marijuana use. Or Hillary's tears. Or Romney's baby-thirsty Mormonism. How about Huckabee's Chuck Norris? We live in a gossip-culture. The sordid, seemingly unimportant details overshadow what really and truly matters.

And, slowly enough, the poison creeps into the fabric of our society. We all want to get the dirt. 

We get the dirt, and we sleep with the dogs and we get fleas. The fleas fester and we really get nowhere. So the problem remains: There's a big fat elephant at the party, and God knows it isn't campaigning. It's waiting.