Everyday Anarchy

Everyone’s obsessed with politics these days. It’s only natural; we’re in the middle of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history, and it doesn’t help much to be reading the unceasing back-and-forth on editorial pages, either. The media has gleefully stoked the public obsession with this election, with 24-hour coverage of delegate breakdowns and speculation about Hillary’s “breakdown” and McCain’s “affair.”

But fixation on politics distracts from the things that matter most. I implore you, those who pore over every rise or fall in the polls, who hash out the byzantine intricacies of health care or foreign policy, to do a simple thing: Embrace the anarchy in your life. I don’t mean for you to take up a black flag, riot in the streets, or shoot President McKinley. I mean something that is more human than political wonkery, something you forget as you are overcome by primaries and polls. Politics is important, but some things in life should remain personal.

By anarchy, I mean the little things you do without subordinating yourself to some greater cause or heeding some elected authority. It’s all the wonderful things that happen in your life without a warrant, a subpoena, an audit, or a friendly letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s buying toothpaste at CVS and it’s gossiping with your friends—about someone other than Barack Obama. The change we can believe in is the change you do on your own, whether it’s swearing off all-nighters in Lamont or embracing them.

Rejoice in your everyday anarchy, because politics is by necessity a zero-sum game; one candidate will win and others will lose. Obama surges, Clinton crashes. Republicans gain a House seat, the Democrats drop one. Of course, there’s a place for politics, and its well and good to devote time and thought to it, but at some point we have to take a break from red and blue maps, from tables of poll numbers, from endorsement speeches, and from the scandal du jour.

What’s wrong is to see politics, as many do, as the alpha and omega of our lives. While some have called our generation apathetic or disengaged, we on the inside are perhaps more susceptible to political mania than any before us—particularly at Harvard. Here, for every burnt out non-voter, there’s two or three more that will start stumping for their favorite horse at the drop of a hat. These people have become so immersed in the argument against one political camp or ideology that they’ve entirely forgotten the argument against politics at large: namely, that nothing should matter this much.

The tide doesn’t seem set to turn soon, either; American government-as-religion seems set to win more converts, not to dissolve. For example, Obama has interspersed his soapbox oratory with calls for a new “national service,” one that aims to instill an optimistic sense of duty and country in young Americans like ourselves. Meanwhile, McCain has mused of regiments of uniformed young charity workers living in barracks, a return to the days of the Civilian Community Corps . But it’s hard to see how pressuring or coercing our youth for months or years will make them love their fellow Americans—meaning more likely their government.

So the current obsession with “youth involvement” is very nice, but it already looks to have gone too far. We can’t send every problem to Washington to solve, and we can’t all become political pundits or state employees—even the idea is reckless and blinkered. Decry aspiring investment bankers all you like, but someone has to make the money that Washington spends. The wonderful part of America, or what America should be, is the ability of a person to ignore politicians and politics as much as possible. Love your inner anarchist, and put down the newspaper—or at least read the funnies.

Daniel C. Barbero ’11, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Canaday Hall.