I haven't posted here in a while because, like other commentators I suspect, I have more important things to do than critique the obvious failings of the worst intellectuals of our time. And I don't miss the clueless often nameless Aussie commentators ("'ealth care is free in Amurica by crikey...you scum!") who defend them. In fact, after the Dean debacle, I decided to get away from the keyboard and do something hard and difficult for political change in America.
I've joined the Vast Left Conspiracy, which consists of the NAACP/ACORN/ACT/MOVE On and a dozen other groups and I register voters door to door and on busy streets when I get a spare moment. I do it six days a week. I left my job selling Dell computers to do this. And if you're wondering about what's wrong with the American economy, I make more money working for the non profit.
I actually wrote about this in my newest column for Better Humans. Excerpted here:
I've always taken politics pretty seriously ever since college. It's sort of like what Ralph Nader (please don't vote for him; go here for why) says: If you don't act on politics, then eventually politics will act on you.
For me, in the early 80s, I was always watching to see if the late President Reagan would be successful in "acting" to gut my student loans. He always proposed it, but Congress, controlled by Democrats, always kept my loan burden intact.
It was in those summers—when I started realizing that who was in office could affect my life for the better or worse—that I first started canvassing in support of political issues. Canvassing for money, if you're not familiar with it, isn't the easiest way to make a living or cash for college. Back in the early 80s, the quota was US$80 dollars a night. Now, the quota is about US$130 a night. I've estimated that I've spent about five years of my life canvassing on everything from lower cable bills to abolishing the North American Free Trade Agreement. I even ran a field canvass for three years in Evansville, Indiana. Call me committed.
Today, I'm back at it in Pittsburgh, knocking on doors and asking people if they're registered to vote. You might ask yourself what this has to do with the transhumanist dream, where we live out our lives in fusion-driven Betterhumans space habitats, whiling away our several century lifespan seeking to understand every allusion and reference in the works of Joyce or Alan Moore, or actively partaking in the terraforming of Venus or Titan, or even studying up on that hot new personal genomic cosmetic item, the black rhino horn, grown wherever you like, with accessories.
The answer is that unless transhumanists think seriously about politics and self-promotion, this vision will always remain an interesting dream and not a reality. In fact, not only will you have to work for such a future—a future with real self-determination, no wage slavery and more than a vote every two or four years when all the real issues have already been settled—you will have to fight for it. And most likely, your opposition will be violently stupid people who refuse to give up what Carl Sagan described as the "demon-haunted world" and the obligatory yet soothing bliss stations—an eternity with Jesus and departed loved ones or Allah's 40 virgins—that go along with it.
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