Weekend Journal

Always, in the back of mind, has been the idea that I might sometime want to run for political office. I like politics. I like public speaking. I imagined that I would be very good at it. Last fall, when our town tried to put up a bank in a residential area to save a few bucks, I jumped head first into local politics. What I found amazing was how monumentally bad I was at it.

In order to wage my war against the evil capitalist banker, I wrote letter after letter to the local paper full of big words and legalese. After some debate, I put the PhD after my name. I decided that a man would do that, so should I. It was a matter of principal. I attended multiple town council meetings dressed to the nines. I researched the zoning laws of New Jersey and presented fact after fact. I even set up a blog to further publicize the truth.

And people hated me.

Then my neighbor, a lady who volunteers to be a crossing guard and participates in all the senior events in town, got up and said simply and humbly that the bank was bad for the kids. The planning board smiled and nodded. She said that she had lived in town for twenty years. The planning board smiled and nodded.

The Planning Board is made up of an old guy who has lived in town forever and kept nodding off in meetings, a guy who is the manager of the local farm, an ex-mayor, an ex-PTA president, and a rest estate agent. They had no interest in being lectured by Professor Smarty Pants who only lived in town for two years and never volunteered for anything.

I spent this weekend reading Plato’s The Apology for my theory class. In it, Socrates describes his brief and disastrous experience with political life. He felt that democratic politics was no place for a philosopher. Democracies demand certain niceties, which he didn’t feel like playing. The people were swayed by emotion, not truth.

I am not as noble as Socrates; I am willing to play nice. So, in between reading and taking notes, I went to the American Legion Picnic on Sunday and Town Day on Saturday. I smiled and chatted. I waved at the Town Council members, but didn’t accost them with my views on matters. (They didn’t do too much smiling at me. I really did make a big scene last winter.)

I don’t think that a political life is for me. My life of an academic has made me too arrogant for routine niceness. I have gotten used to the dictatorship of a classroom. But I might have to press my case in the future. To gain some influence with these guys, I have to be seen as one of the folks. I have to eat my hotdogs at the American Legion Picnic.