Politics in the Big City

I have this really stupid habit I ought to kick, which is that every so often I’ll hang out with some friends and talk about politics. I tend to think of people as being born with either the Sports Gene or the Politics Gene; we all have some arbitrary zero-sum activity we invest a lot of emotional energy in. Supporting an athlete rather than a politician is probably better for you as a person, given that a) they don’t have to sell their soul to win a game like they do an election, b) their fans don’t have to pretend they’re a moral paragon against all the evidence, and c) it’s more feasible for the average American to affect the outcome of the Super Bowl than a national election. (An NFL team has a roster of 53 people; the closest election of my lifetime, 2000, was ultimately decided by an electorate of nine.)

Politics as an attempt to influence the direction of the country is just not that useful, but politics as a branch of sociology — treating political affiliation as fashion for people who are more smart than attractive — is fun.

I live in New York, which is a very Democratic city in a pretty Democratic state, but the people I talk to are not a random sample. The big three candidates among my peers are Yang, Trump, and Sanders. I’m sure I know some NeverTrump Republicans, but they tend to exist in a state of wanting to broadcast about politics but not wanting to converse about it — too depressing! I don’t understand how anyone can unironically support Biden, Warren, or Buttigieg. Anyone who backs Biden ends the sentence with “… I guess.”…