I (don't) Want My MSNBC

Let’s get some disclosure out of the way:

For the majority of my adult life, I’ve been a card-carrying Democrat. The first election I was eligible to vote in was Clinton v. Dole in 1996, and I whole-heartedly voted for Clinton. I voted for Gore, Kerry, Obama and Obama, again, in that order. I am pro-choice, pro-social programs, pro-universal healthcare (because we are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have it, for Pete’s sake). I have historically followed presidential campaigns the way normal people follow football or basketball, marking every skyrocket and dip in the polls. I know that Quinnipiac ain’t just a place in Connecticut, and I watch every debate, even the GOP debates, speculating all the variables.

This, however, is the first year since 2000 that I have not had cable in my house. It wasn’t an active decision; I moved into the apartment my husband rented in North Carolina while I was still in Missouri, and he never got cable, so we just inactively decided not to get it. We still watch our shows, though I limit myself to three shows at a time, because I’m supposed to be writing.

It’s the first year since I became a political superfan that I haven’t glutted myself on 24-hour news. I used to devour Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews. Occasionally, I’d flip over to Fox to see what the competition had to say for themselves. My family was subject to a good three hours of political commentary every single night. Outside of the election season, I wasn’t so fanatic, but as soon as candidates started announcing, my eyes and/or ears were glued to what the talking heads were dispensing. I couldn’t help myself. Politico-news was my favorite drug. Just a little, just let Mommy have a tiny bit, just the first 20 minutes of Rachel Maddow, then I promise you can watch Spongebob, kids.

That isn’t to say that I’m completely cut off from what is happening during this election. I still actively seek out information from national news organizations. I know what Donald Trump has said about Mexicans, and Megyn Kelly’s ‘whatever’. I know that allegedly, Trump said he would run as a Republican if he ever ran because they were ‘the dumbest group of voters in the country. I bet my numbers would be terrific’ in People in 1998. I know that the news keeps saying Hillary is kicking tail, but I also know that almost every liberal I know, and that’s in the manys of many democrats, is Feeling the Bern, and that the whole thing makes my eyes narrow and my left brow arch up into a dubious question mark. I read about things as they happen. I might look up a video of something particularly compelling. However, I have forgone the hours-long shoveling of political commentary down my own throat like it was my last meal on death row.

I’ve learned a couple of significant things since I quit my cable news during an election season.

#1. Having ZERO campaign ads shoved in my face is more than absolutely delightful.

#2. I’m not nearly as pissed off at Republicans as I normally am this close to the Iowa caucuses. I haven’t been privy to all of the stupid things people say to get votes during an election. Likewise, I’m not as embarrassed of Democrats this season, for the same reason. I mean, c’mon Hillary of 2008, you landed in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire? As baller and General Patton as that sounds, I’m not biting.

Because I’m not watching programming that continuously reminds us of what we call Democrats and Republicans, I’ve nearly ceased my us vs. them thinking about other human beings. We’re so silly, us humans. We have to be able to identify something to understand it. The more labels and more specific the labels we have to describe someone, the better we think we can comprehend what happens inside that person’s head. This is almost never true. Sure, we can gain an understanding about that person’s position on certain issues, but we don’t know dick about that person really. You know this is true. Think about how weird it is when someone else uses just one of your labels to evaluate who you are. Think of times when you’ve met friends of friends, how they might know one thing about you, like the fact that you’re a professor  . . . and then the resulting meeting is so strange: “You don’t dress like a professor. You don’t look like a professor. What do you mean you haven’t read _________? I thought you were an English professor.” Even better, “You’re so smart, I can’t believe it, I thought you were a stripper.”

When we identify people by who they vote for in elections, we do everyone the disservice of believing we know who they are. And now that I’m not being an MSNBC glutton, I’ve pulled back considerably on my hyper-classification of who Republicans or Democrats are based on programmed information.

3. I’ve learned that there’s only so much information you need about the goings-on of the current campaign season, and you can fit it into 30 minutes of reading headlines and skimming articles, pretty much. News organizations need to fill those 24 hours with something, and a play by play of everything everyone did in every town across America does not make you more informed. It makes you more informed on shit that doesn’t matter.

4. And while we’re on shit that doesn’t matter: it doesn’t matter how much MSNBC I watch, the person who raises the most money in an election is the person who wins. The candidate who has raised the most money in presidential elections has won every time since 1960. We don’t have elections, we have auctions. With the introduction of Citizens United (such a strange contradictory name) we as individual Americans have no say whatsoever in who can win because we can never outspend a Super-PAC. We can never outspend the Koch Bros. or Michael Bloomberg or Sheldon Adelson. We can never outspend the pharmaceutical lobby, or the insurance lobby, or the gun lobby or whatever dumbass lobby is representing corporate interest.

What I’m saying is that I regret investing so much passion into something upon which I have no real influence. That one person-one vote thing they tell you about in school is not really true. We don’t live in a Democracy. Technically, we live in a Republic, but even closer to reality, we live in a Plutocracy. Wealth governs our country. It cannot be fixed under our current or any existing economic paradigm. The world as we exist in it is rudderless. So who you vote for means about as much as which team you pick for the Super Bowl win. All the rooting and tooting you do for that team has no effect on whether or not that team wins.

The news programming I gave up is part of that machine. The machine that needs us to continue to be separate from one another in order for it to continue to work. If we continue to be bamboozled by the system we’ve helped create, the world will continue to turn. We’ll pick our favorite teams and our favorite candidates, but we’ll have no real control over the world turning under us. I’m choosing not to be a part of it anymore. I believe we can do better. I believe we can all be human beings holding ourselves to a higher standard than the one we’re looking at right now. I have dear Republican friends who I have ceased to label as such because it gets us nowhere. It’s as useful as labeling someone a Seahawk or a Marlin or a Cowboy fan. It means nothing to real America.

I dare you to not let yourself be identified by what the existing political paradigm wants to call you. It’s destructively divisive. It only serves the people who wish to keep the system status quo. And I’m over it. I dare you to quit MSNBC or Fox News. I dare you to challenge your own party. I dare you to find a friend who has been labeled the opposite of your label, and discover 20 things you have in common. I dare you to imagine how much pants-shitting would happen if we collectively said "We quit your bullshit, American politics". It would be exceptionally filthy in Washington D.C. that day, and it would be glorious.