Fair warning: This is going to get
self-righteous, and there are
politics involved.
I was up late the other night listening to some friends talk about politics, and it finally hit me what the term armchair means when applied to politics, as in armchair liberal, armchair activist, etc.
My friends are perfect representations of why everyone gets pissed at members of the white middle class who think they're political. They've never been involved in any political campaigns, done any kind of activism or organizing, and at least one of them has apparently never talked to anyone outside his socioeconomic background where race, class, or gender differences became an issue. In short, they've lead politically sheltered lives, voting every year as their main political action.
In the course of the discussion, one of them demonstrated political naivete the likes of which I haven't seen since high school. The other has a philosophy that is better thought out, but that I as an activist have some issues with that transcend the objections my own political philosophy raises.
The point of this that politics is better learned through activism, whether it's in the streets or as part of a campaign, and that while I respect anyone with a knowledge of history, political science, or sociology, all this armchair discussion without action either to back it up or to base it on is just so much wind over open prairie.