>from
>http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/InYourHead/allinyourhead.html
>
>In her 1998 book, Avoiding Politics: How Americans
>Produce Apathy in Everyday Life, Eliasoph met with
>people around the country to find out why they weren’t
>more engaged in political issues and events. She found
>that it’s all about power.
>
>"People are afraid to talk about politics because they
>think that, aside from raising conflict and being sort
>of scary, it will make them feel powerless," she says.
>"The more you talk about politics, the more you get
>discouraged and the more powerless you feel. People are
>sort of assuming that talking won’t do any good."
In the latest Baffler, Doug Henwood has a great chart that is called the "alienation index." It is based on polls taken yearly and measures "American's alienation from those with power." In 1966, the year that the polling began, 30 percent of the people felt alienated; in 1997, it was over 60 percent. The index is based on questions like, "Do you tend to feel or not feel that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," and "Do you tend to feel or not feel that most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself." In 1997, 78 percent of people tended to feel the first and 69 percent the second.
None of this seems to indicate a coming revolution or the destruction of political apathy, but I see one upside to these attitudes: These poll results indicate to me that at least most people don't *really* believe that American-Dream, land-of-equality, anyone-can-achieve-their-dreams crap. In the abstract they might say they do, but when asked about particulars it's clear they don't buy it. Yes, this cynicism is rather depressing and discouraging. But, because people are not really attached to or enamored with the system as it is, it seems to me to be a decent enough cynicism from which to launch real social, political, and economic change.
But maybe I am just a hopeless optimist...
Eric Beck