Are You Treating Politics Like a Hobby?

Offline with Jon Favreau

Crooked Media

Society & Culture, News

4.7 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are college educated Democrats going to cost Joe Biden the election? Eitan Hersh, a Political Science professor at Tufts, joins Offline to take a closer look at “political hobbyists,” aka people who think that getting involved in politics means following the news and forming political opinions. Eitan’s book, Politics is for Power, lays out a roadmap for folks who are tired of online takes and ready to get involved in politics at the community level—where engagement could make a real impact. He and Jon talk about what organizing looks like in every day life, and how the most important activism is the kind you probably won’t find on social media.

Transcript

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0:00.0	political hobbyism because there is no goal,
0:03.5	it's really about expressive energy.
0:05.8	It's just like, how do I emote?
0:07.2	How do I make myself heard?
0:09.7	It's all me oriented.
0:11.2	And so I think you can convince yourself that that's sort of what
0:14.7	politics is and oftentimes when you see political hobbyists suddenly come into
0:20.6	politics like let's now all of it we all of a sudden really want to make a stand
0:24.6	about this or that issue. You see people who like do not know how to behave, just sort of emote.
0:31.6	And the people on the other side,
0:32.9	you know, like the lawmakers, the, what are the bureaucrats
0:35.9	are like, what are you doing?
0:37.5	Like, this is not how this works, right?
0:39.2	This is not how this works, right? This is not how this works.
0:41.1	I'm John Favreau.
0:42.2	Welcome to offline.
0:45.0	Hey everyone, my guest today is Aeton Hirsch, professor of political science at Tufts University.
0:52.0	So back in 2017, about 100 years ago, we started crooked with the hope that we could convince
0:57.6	people to not just care about politics, but to actually do politics, to become volunteers and activists and organizers.
1:05.0	And we've been really inspired by how many people took us up on that by getting involved in
1:08.9	Vote Save America.
1:10.8	But that's central problem, that too many political news junkies aren't actually politically
	...

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