I Am the 3%: A Highly Political Post from the Apolitical Hinterlands

Either no one should listen to anything I have to say about politics, or everyone should, because I have not been watching the news.

I am among the 3% of Americans who don't own a television, but I used to be among the 1%.

TV ownership is down in America. Why? According to the reliable-looking Internet source I just googled, it's the “persistently rocky economy,” which sounds about right.

The persistently rocky economy is not news to me.

No, I didn't lose my TV because of the big bank bailout. I haven't had access to a television in my home since 1992, which was the year I left my parents' house (unless you count the TV set relegated to the corner of the living room during the 4 months I lived in a furnished apartment in Copenhagen, but I didn't understand Danish, and I never watched it).

For most of my adult life, I could have afforded to buy a TV. A really good one, even, with a gazillion channels of cable and five different remote controls, but I chose not to, and as a result, I have been out of the media loop for almost 20 years.

I have never watched a single episode of Survivor or Lost or CSI or American Idol. It took me a full two and a half minutes to retrieve the words “American Idol” from my memory bank, actually: I was like, what's that show with Paula Abdul and someone else, the guy everyone thinks is snarky, and they judge these contestants whose songs sometimes end up on the radio?

But it's not just the fluff I've missed out on.

Know how many times I saw that endlessly-replayed footage of the planes crashing into the twin towers? Um...once, I think. I'm pretty sure there was a clip of it in Fahrenheit 9/11, which I watched in a packed Oakland theater the first week it came out.

I'm not bragging. Oh, okay, maybe I am a little smug about my American Idol virginity. But I'm not particularly proud of my political ignorance.

What's my excuse? Well, there's the whole disaffected-with-politics thing, that malaise that settled on those of us who voted for Al Gore, and were dismayed to learn that “majority vote” didn't mean what we thought it did.

I'm the whatever-percent who endured four years of Bush malapropisms (I'm an English teacher, not a math teacher, okay?) and who then, spurred on by something akin to panic, actually walked door-to-door canvassing for Kerry, even though he was kind of a douchebag, but still, not Bush, and therefore better, right?

I'm the whatever-percent who said, “What, you've got to be frickin' KIDDING me: four MORE years of W?” and promptly gave up.

Oh, and let's not forget the whole disaffected-with-the-media thing, because there was that time I was in that peace march in San Francisco, back when it seemed like maybe there was a chance of staying out of Iraq if enough people took to the streets, and then I made the mistake of reading the newspaper coverage of the event.

“A few thousand protesters took to the streets of San Francisco,” I read, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because it wasn't a few thousand protesters, it was backed up on BART for hours, it was everyone I knew plus their cousins from Boondock City, it was shoulder to shoulder marching for miles, no room in the square with the catalpa trees, biggest-public-event-ever, and I was thrilled, because there was NO WAY that kind of demonstration could go unnoticed.

Wrong. Apparently, our united voices did not matter. Not only that, but I was moving from California to Arizona, where the political climate was decidedly...wackier.

So, during Bush's second term, I dropped out of political discourse altogether.

I read the pamphlets issued by Pima County, the lists of pros and cons for various initiatives on the Arizona ballots, and I voted. I went over to a friend's house to watch the presidential debates, and I voted. That was just about the extent of it.

Meanwhile, I watched my neighbors lose their jobs, and then my husband lost his job, and then my children lost their health insurance, and then Arizona decided to cut funding to the program that would have provided them with health insurance, and, since we were starting up a small business, and knew we would therefore be poverty-stricken for at least a couple more years, we decided to move a state that had some kind of social services safety net.

Ergo, Oregon, where my children not only have medical care, should they ever need it (knock wood – Ravenna hasn't so much as had an ear infection, and she's almost four), but they get dental care, too. It's almost like being back in Denmark again.

Maybe that's why I'm starting to feel more hopeful, even though my family has never been poorer.

Maybe that's why, last night, cutting up carrots for dinner, I was suddenly seized by a desire to take that bag of carrots over to Occupy Portland's community kitchen, because, according to the Willamette Week, they need fresh vegetables over there.

Oh, I know that half the people living in those tents in the park blocks are homeless guys and street punks who don't know any more about politics than I do. I know that, if I donate carrots to Occupy Portland, half the people who eat them will be drunk or stoned or tweaking so hard they'll look like they've been dipped in Crisco.

When you start giving out free food, freeloaders come flocking.

But I think I have seen enough of what's going to happen to this country if we keep worrying about the freeloaders among the poor.

In case you missed it, what happens is rampant corporate freeloading, less and less trickle-down, rising rates of joblessness and homelessness, and a bunch of disenfranchised folks who are willing to sleep in tents in our public parks, even if it means dealing with the hordes of homeless who show up hoping for a free meal from the makeshift community kitchen.

Unless I've missed something (and I suppose that's possible!), we still live in the richest country in the world. There's still enough to go around. I, for one, would like to keep it that way – but not by pawning off our dirty work on other nations, or stealing their resources, or bankrupting all of our children and grandchildren by borrowing recklessly from their future to fund our present excess.

I'm beginning to think it might be possible. Maybe there's a will, and maybe there's a way.

Don't expect a lot of political commentary from me in the months and years to come. I've got a lot of other things on my mind – for example, how to feed my family, how to be a better friend, how to find fulfillment in the work I do, how to live each day with gratitude for what I have...you know, that kind of thing.

But this morning, I am jumping on the bandwagon to make an important announcement:

I am the 3%, and I am now paying attention.