Category: Democracy

An piece in this week’s New Republic, not available for free online,
talks about the large Russian community around Brighton Beach, in New
York state. There’s a fierce battle going on between two Russian-
speakers for the Democratic nomination (and hence the seat in November).

The Russian community, interestingly, have been excluded from the
political process in the past, and that has bred in them a sort of
apathy that I find quite recognisable from disengaged people in the
UK. The speaker is Gene Borsh, a voter-education activist who works
with the Russians in Brighton Beach:

“The result is this terrible apathy.What will my vote
change?” He summed up the communal affliction as “pofigism,” a one-of-
a-kind Russian neologism that roughly translates as “I-don’t-give-a-
shit-ism.” Borsh’s colleague Marina Belotserkovsky described it as
trepidation before the unknown that became expressed as disdain: “We
stand apart—we don’t get involved in the things these idiots do.”

Pofigism – a word we have use for.

I’ve just been reading Peter Hennessy and Richard Wilson’s highly engaging evidence to the Parliamentary Committee that investigated political memoirs a while back. The full exchanges can be read here, and are worth reading, but my favourite passage was surely this (from Hennessy, addressing Wilson):

You have always tried to think the best of people. That is why you have been a civil servant. You have had to pretend that the twerps that you have been dealing with were in fact pillars of the constitution and bring some insight. You cannot help yourself. You are still charitable about them. You do not realise what rats most of them are. You never have done!

A famous essay from 1964, here.

Tristram Hunt writes an excellent opinion piece in the Guardian, asking for people to pay more attention to, and to celebrate, Britain’s history of dissent and radicalism. It’s not all Kings, Queens and village greens, he points out.

MetaFilter points to the pointless but endearing Wikocracy. Not a state run by Wiccans (a scary thought), but a Wiki (editable website) for laws. It’s main page is here, but don’t worry, they assure us:

“Nothing on this platform is legally binding.”

Phew!

Because they reward people who rush to the extreme and ignore compromise, like Maryscott O’Connor.

A paper by Joss Hands on local computer-mediated deliberation.

Stephen Coleman, Steven Clift and a couple of people I don’t know have launched a new group blog on Corante called Civic Minded. It’s about politics and participation in the age of the Internet. (RSS feed not working at present)

A repost of an old link from Many to Many, called: 17 March 2006

Viva la libertà! MetaFilter discusses.