Your definition of political engagement is laughable. Sitting passively while a politician gives a stump speech, or while talking heads spew conventional wisdom is not engagement. The State of the Union is a masterfully orchestrated piece of Kabuki, but it is utterly insignificant. Am I supposed to be surprised that the president wants to stimulate the economy, or that job creation is a major priority? Everything of consequence that Obama said appeared in the papers the next day, and since we all have a lot to do, it was easier to just scan a blog. It’s the height of political immaturity to imagine that we’re responsible for hanging onto every rhetorical flourish that dribbles out of an authority figure.

The Obama model of politics – a bunch of acolytes of a personality cult herded unthinkingly into the voting booth by professional operators – has been proven bankrupt over the last year as the tea party superminority managed to capture the debate by marshaling angry masses. In the contemporary corporatist state, the civics lessons we learned in second grade have become impotent. Real reform will require real organizing. Democratic participation has nothing to do with mass media spectacle – if we want to have an effect we can go to meetings, canvass people on the street, lobby representatives, protest, or form guerrilla cells. I sincerely hope that we have learned to put aside our faith in celebrities and turgid rituals. Sorry if that was a little vitriolic, but I’m sick of this old lecture.

I comment on the comment…teaparty superminority…angry masses…they are not angry, we are frightened. If you can’t see what you have you will never appreciate what you have lost, and blood will be demanded to get it back. That is our human tradgedy, and that is our fear. Young inexperienced minds have no appreciation for the costs time demands, and the price paid is borrowed from their future stealing the freedom they never understood.
I was in southern Tennessee in 1966 working with young lives hopefully looking for freedom. Opportunities to understand that our lives are our own are lost in the mass hysteria of hope for something better when one has never realized what they do possess.
Opportunity is the favor that is bestowed by individual freedom, and if there is no appreciated price paid to claim it depression will swallow it up. Men like Martin Luther King are leaders who understand the cost of freedom, and the price of opportunity. We pay with our lives. Now what value have you personally placed on change for a better America? Together we can do this, but it will take your life. No one placed resposibility on you, Mr. President, and you are no Martin Luther King, but you act like an angry king. You demand change from everyone else but yourself. It is time for you to come clean with your intentions and follow through with your promises. Perhaps everyone else is wrong, and you are right? No, if you take my childrens ability to provide for themselves, and you steal my ability to put food on the table. What is in it for the future of this country? What of these students who believed not in you, but the hope you promised?
This is my advice. Work hard complete your education, and make friends with your neighbors. When times are tough we must learn to work together.

Take a breath and settle down “Every Wesleyan Student.” Amy sought to drum up some political discourse on campus, an increasingly challenging task since the tinsel of the campaign has given way to the “mundane reality of governing.” She, like you, is aware of the tinsel, and she, like you, cares much more about actual governing. Her point is that without tinsel, people stop watching.
What was striking about the State of the Union this year, to me, was actually how without pomp, without frills, and without romance, it was. This particular piece of “Kabuki” was not orchestrated to inspire or to entertain. Rather, Obama sought to impress upon the American public the difficulties of partisanship and the paralyzing challenges facing American policymakers today. If you give the post more than a cursory glance, you see that Amy does not chastise the youth for their disinterest, but rather, she wonders, now that the Obama administration has set theatre aside, what will keep people watching (or reading, or voting, or caring)?
This is a perfect venue for the political discourse Amy and the Roosevelt Institute hope to stir up on campus. But we do hope, however, that participants swallow their “vitriolic” spasms and maintain a respectful tone so that students feel free to voice their opinions.