Who cares about politics?

Imagine drawing a circle on a white board that is about the diameter of a basketball. Then, pretend to make a dot a bit smaller than the size of a pea in the centre of that circle. If the area inside the basketball-sized circle represents the population, that dot represents the number of people who are involved and care about politics, most of the time.

That's how Gerry Nicholls started his presentation on getting the Libertarian message out, back in April of 2011 to a group of us. He went on to say that if another circle was drawn with the diameter of a softball, inside the big one but centred on the dot, the area within the softball-sized circle represents the population that is somewhat involved in politics (especially during elections). The area from the boundary of the soft-ball circle to the boundary of the basket-ball circle, well, that's the majority of the population and they are clueless about politics most of the time.

I used to think that clueless meant apathetic. But look at it this way. The great majority of car owners, have no idea how their car's engine works, or any other system for that matter, but they certainly are not apathetic about the operation of their car. When it works, they're happy, when it doesn't work, well, you get it.

So it is with politics, very few care or are involved with how things work. Why should they be? They rely or the political pros, who are the mechanics that keep the machine of government working. People are far more interested in political personalities than political issues which actually drive politics. What was Michelle Obama wearing during the recent US Inauguration? Was Barak chewing gum after the Inaugural Address? (Yes) Did you check the link, see what I mean?

So it's not fair to say that people don't care about politics, to continue my metaphor, they are just very reluctant to open the hood and get all greasy. Who can blame them? People are busy trying to live their lives, trying to earn a living to feed themselves and their family, as well as the ever growing government - actually several governments. Its worse that kids, kids may become independent, that is never true about government.

This week I was introduced to a new website called Rate My Government. As a former teacher I'm quite familiar with Rate-My-Teachers, which I found very accurate in my day. If you scroll down this page on the right side you will see a link to rate your doctor, it works pretty well too. Why not Rate-My-Government?

The site itself, still pretty new, has lots of potential, and it should work well even for the clueless, but it looks to be designed for the "involved." That could be a problem, especially since they are relying on many eyes to read many ads, look back at Gerry's diagram.