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Comment by kbutler | Hacker News Reader

Wow, politics seems the opposite to me. It has the morbid fascination of a train wreck. You can't stop it, you know it's going badly, yet you can't look away.

Family and building things are much more positive sources of energy to me.

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That’s because you’ve become so accustomed to politics as tribalism and sports-like entertainment that you’ve completely forgotten why we even started the political systems we have today in the first place. Divestment of power, not accumulation. Serving others, not ourselves. You can still embody those things. But it’s better to admit to ourselves that we aren’t selfless enough to do that, than hide behind a learned helplessness.

I feel that people who are “into politics” as such typically lean in deeper in on the tribalism/‘sports team resembling’ style of engagement.

I bet if you stop watching national popular news outlets and instead focus on local politics you'll find them much more tame. Of course this depends on where you live.

IMO People focus way too much on national politics and not enough on local.

From the inside it looks different and is noway near as hostile as media and especially the internets make it look like.

Politics is like sex. Watching it feels quite different from actually taking part.

Politics can be so much more than elections!

Focus on one issue and one bill, like you would with a startup MVP.

You can solve some of these problems in weeks!

Raising my family and building lasting things for the world are my positive sources of energy too!

I'm just saying that after 15 years founding three startups, I've found my building instinct works incredibly well in politics!

join a party that you care about. The tides are changing, they always do.

A plague on both their houses. Two major cults shouting past each other and a bunch of minor looneybins.

Both parties would cast me out for heresy for some of my beliefs and opinions. Why volunteer for that?

im in Canada, we have more than 2 parties

In the US we have a couple hundred; structurally, though, only at most two are usually meaningfully competitive at any given time (both locally and nationally, though historically not always the same two in every area as nationally), and which two are nationally conpetitive is very stable (though one of the two has changed at two different times in US history, one of which involved a significant period of only one national competitive party with internal factions.)

I understand. In Canada we have only had two parties create a federal government. But 5 separate parties have formed government provincially. 5 parties have federal presence. And if we didn't have first-past-the-post voting, we would easily have Greens, NDPs, and others in seats of federal power.

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