For the last two opinions, I have been lambasting politicians and some may be thinking that I'm counseling political apathy, that you should simply throw up your hands in despair and give up on the system. To do that, of course, would give the politicians the kind of triumph they would like, since an uninterested electorate is a pliable electorate. As righteous as it may feel, political apathy is not an available choice (even though over half the electorate chooses it every four years).
The solution is quite the opposite: vigorous and sustained political involvement. In what way? All the politicians spend millions of dollars on TV ads and mailing campaigns. Where is there room for the good ol' volunteer? It's there if you look for it. In presidential races, money is undoubtedly the overwhelming priority since the necessity of blanketing the country requires an expensive use of the information networks. But in the smaller races, in the congressional races, in state elections, in local contests, volunteers coming forward could significantly reduce the amount of money needed to fuel the fires. It would also have the added benefit of drawing upon peoples' better natures, asking for a little bit of altruism in a time when people seem only willing to be paid in money. The politician should really be out there asking for this sort of help instead of being taken in by the hype of the "experts." But the local citizen, if he or she is really concerned about making politics again somewhat of the province of the people who vote, must also step forward and demand that he or she be used.
Political races are not the only political forum for citizens. The world is full of wrongs that need to be righted. Depending on what principles guide you, there is no doubt an organization somewhere that could use your money, time, and effort. During some free moment, drop into your local library and leaf through the Encyclopedia of Associations. You will be amazed at the number and diversity of organizations sprouting up like mushrooms. Some are frivolous (like The Curved Dashboard Club) and others offensive (The American White People's Party). But there are scads of groups out there willing to accept voluntary help in their causes. It may not sound like politics to be out helping the local YWCA or organizing the Plant-A-Maple-Tree-On-Main-Street Committee, but anything that increases peoples' involvement in the lives of others and in some way defrays the cost of loneliness, deprivation, or exploitation is a political act and as such is dedicated to helping people have greater control over their lives.
The main thrust of what I'm getting at here, then, is that each citizen must take into his or her own hands the responsibility for his or her own political education. One cannot depend upon the politicians to be adequate mentors, nor can we depend upon capitalistic media to be the disinterested purveyors of clear and sound information. And citizens have by and large given up this responsibility through a combination of several things: 1) their being persuaded by the media and the government that they do not have the smarts to think for themselves (a reality reinforced by the public schools they've attended); 2) their own inherent laziness as human beings; 3) the rich society that has, until recently, made them dangerously comfortable. Self-education is hard work. It means sifting through several publications to find out the biases of writers and thus find out what the truth is. It means writing: letters to the editor, local newspaper columns, journals. It means self-discipline. It means above all a certain kind of moral anger mixed with the humor of Murphy's Law that impels you into the fray and buoys you up during the fight.
Jefferson believed that the essence of a successful democracy is an informed citizenry. He felt that newspapers, as prone as they were to hyperbole, were the best guarantors of that access to information. Well, the technology has changed as has the political shape of things, but Jefferson's dictum still stands. Only now, the education cannot and will not come from the leaders in the society (if it ever did). They have abdicated their role as teachers and have mostly concentrated upon the maintenance of their own status. The resulting vacuum has to be filled by the citizen's own mind, heart, and sweat. Only through this kind of self-education will the electorate again gain the respect of the politicians and gain also the respect for itself. Being informed is hard work, but the alternative -- continued dependency upon people who do not and will not have your best interests at heart -- is worse, since it is the beginning of a subtle but iron-clad tyranny.