Recently, I finished my term as the co-chair of my chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Until now I had been in a leadership position at some capacity for the last 3 years.
Now I have the time to return to my creative work. While I loved my time in leadership, I am exhausted. But I find myself wondering what will my writing about politics look like now. Being in leadership in DSA gave me a first hand perspective into the world of organizing, now I feel just like an observer. And like I said before, I’m very tired.
And like I said, I’ve been in leadership for 3 years, I’m just so damn tired.
I want to keep writing about politics. I want political education on this blog and I want my poetry. But I walk a fine line, there are too many grifters and pundits in the world today, both on the right and left, and I do not wish to join them. Nor do I wish to become a political commentator for a career. While I think being politically active is very important, it cuts into my poetic lifestyle, ie my drinking and fornicating.
Punditry is something that needs to end any way. I write about politics to make complicated concepts simpler, and to defend the left, not to be a pundit. Pundits are people who make their living off of pure conjecture, conjecture which they sell as information. They are a parasite sucking on our democratic will. They extort our instinctive desire for information for career and profit, and it is often after their jobs with a failed campaign ending. I have lost count of how many failed campaign staffers go on to make a healthy living ruining other campaigns with their bad takes on CNN and Washington Post op-eds.
I also do not wish to join the likes of leftist pundits like Chapo Trap House or Jimmy Dore, the world does not need more self-righteous profiteers of our politics. I am sick of the political posturing of online leftists who put having a sexy rebellious image ahead of doing actual work, your twitter followers aren’t going to start the revolution.
There I go editorializing, maybe I should be a pundit?
No, better to stay a poet, I don’t want my patrons to pay for more punditry, I want them to feel like patrons of the arts. I am an artist, not a con artist. I’m a poet, not politician nor a pundit.
Sometimes I think that one day I will retire from writing about politics and focus just on poetry, but then I am reminded by those over quoted words from Edmund Burke, about how evil triumphs when good people do nothing. Writing about the left, giving the world an understanding of socialism, but most importantly putting an expression of the raw reality of our time and existence into words, that is what I want to do.
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James J Jackson 