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Related: 5 Insane Strategies That Won Elections (And Changed History)

That's the thing. I'm frustrated with people who follow politics for entertainment, for the fun of watching the drama play out and the spiteful joy of owning the morons on the other side. That, after all, is how we got here, with a reality TV host as president, one who rode a tide of high ratings created by the very people who hate him most. Their morbid fascination put him in power, and will likely keep him there. We like having our morality in black and white, to be able to yell about a guy who puts refugee kids in cages instead of having to argue about the unsustainability of Medicare fee schedules and how that would be addressed under Medicare-for-all.

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As long as we're following these issues purely for entertainment, we'll lose, because the things we want aren't fun to talk about. Your guy will spend the next year talking about projected CO2 levels in 2050, and Trump will blow it out of the headlines with a single sexist joke. We'll blame the media (since nothing can ever be our fault) for covering the latter, despite the fact that we simply won't engage with political content that isn't outrage porn. The war in Yemen is boring, dunking on Tucker Carlson's dumb tweets is fun.

But politics shouldn't be fun. And the reason the right controls every level of government is that they're willing to do the boring parts. They'll go to the city council meetings, they'll vote for the local shit, they'll actually follow through with their boycott threats. "But they've unfairly redrawn the election map!" Sure, but how did they obtain the power to do that?

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They seize power because A) they believe they're entitled to it, and B) they translate that entitlement to action. If you want to copy something from the other side, fucking copy that.

That just goes back to that one lesson no movie will ever teach you: Accomplishing great things isn't just hard, it's boring. Important subjects are tedious and have no entertainment value whatsoever. Standing in line to vote is boring, the actual vote itself is boring. Too boring for many of us to tolerate, even though we say the entire fate of the world hangs in the balance. I don't think that will change on Tuesday, though I've never wanted so badly to be wrong about something in my life.

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Jason "David Wong" Pargin is the Executive Editor at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter or on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram.

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