Apoc-Election 2012

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, young America. You feel that the world has done you wrong because you’re unemployed and you can’t pay off your college debts. You shout with the ninety-nine percent on your way out of Starbucks about the greed of corporations and/or the liberal elite. You talk with your friends in hushed tones about the foolishness of social movements or the greed of immigrants over a bottle of beer made in Mexico by a unionized company. You aren’t going to vote because there’s nobody worth your time; you don’t write to Congress because you don’t want to be part of a corrupt system.

Guess what, 18-to-30 demographic. If your politics are about you, you’re doing it wrong. Treat your college education like the privilege it is and use it to analyze the barrage of information you receive every day. Put your energy into raising money for scholarship funds for those for whom higher education isn’t a given next step, who didn’t party with you in college because their booze money went to help pay their parents’ bills. If you’re unemployed and living in your parents’ basement, drag yourself away from the blogosphere and volunteer for an organization that is doing good for the world. You may be the 99% in the U.S., but by virtue of living here, you are the 1% of the global population. The hungry/sick/trafficked/abused/pick-your-cause are left in the great wake of your privilege, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

There is a lot in this country to be mad about, twenty-somethings. We are a generation whose nature is idealism, and the frightening state of national and international politics chip away at that resolve. I’m jaded too; the $5 given to each of a dozen causes I cared about have resulted in a flurry of emails that hit my inbox every week telling me about the refugee/sick child/poor family/poached whale that will be helped if I dig a little deeper, and I’ve become inured. The news is a flurry of soundbites from policymakers who have forgotten the difference between principles and ideology. The bickering is grating – I’d rather listen to the new Glee soundtrack too. But it will never go away until we find our voice.

That is the reason to bother. For the first time in decades, 20-somethings voted in 2008, and they voted hard. Politicians began to wake up to the thought that allowing retirees to control their agenda wouldn’t work forever. We got expanded healthcare coverage, (briefly) extended Pell grants, and an end to segregation on the basis of sexuality for our country’s largest employer. Don’t let them get away with retrenching the gains that we – and frankly, folks smarter and more dedicated than we – have gained. Call the national campaign committee of your party and ask how you can organize the vote, or hell, run for office. You matter, as much as you fear and hope. Live up to it.

Twit Face

Today's front page revelation from D.C.'s preeminent political newspaper, Politico, is that lobbyists are not down with being up on their social media. The article suggests that it's strange for this center of national power to have so little presence on the world's most popular form of media, the constant barage of updates from Facebook and Twitter. As the author puts it,

About half of the year's top-grossing lobby shops have no discernible presence on either Facebook or Twitter, the nation's two most popular social-media sites, a POLITICO analysis* indicates. Most of the rest have two- or three-figure followings that would embarrass a not-particularly-popular ninth-grader. 

It isn't surprising, given the audience for Politico (I picked up mine at my friendly local Starbucks, nestled comfortably between K Street and the IMF, whilst ordering a Dirty Hipster) that the artcile focused on the loss to public relations specialists of a potential power source at the public square that is the interwebz. What is surprising is that message's provenance in Dave Levinthal, a former Communications Director at the Center for Responsive Politics, which claims its mission as "to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more transparent and responsive government."

The fact lobbyists don't yet understand the Twitterz while elected officials have begun to is a positive sign that there is an area of public life untouched by the enormous quantities of money spent shaping public policy. However, it also means that the Facebook-friendless lobbyists are still doing their work behind closed doors, in the computer-free smoke-filled back rooms of yore. That is the true concern: not the impact that Farragut North is failing to make 140 characters at a time on an iPhone-glued electorate, but the impact they continue to make outside the scrutiny of a public that, to its credit, is a greater fan of the President than of Katy Perry.

So pursue your right to e-rage, or better yet, engage in a reasoned, populist discourse, and Tweet Dave.

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* I understand "POLITICO analysis" to mean "an intern counted." I do, however, want to credit Dave and his copy editor for their excellent hyphen usage.