Salon.com | The moviegoing voter

Democracy is not simply about the vote. The vote is not simply like a ticket bought at Disneyland. And citizenship is not about the satisfaction of the id.

I think that the kind of passion now being poured into politics is the kind of passion that belongs in the bedroom, in novels and movies, on television and in sports. It is the passion of fucking and getting fucked, of beating and being beaten, of tricking and shooting and winning. It is not the passion of governing, which is the slow, simmering passion of long-held beliefs. Citizenship in a democracy is about the difficult and messy division of resources, about the tedious maintenance of infrastructure, about the orderly administration of tragic justice, about incremental improvements in the protection of the poor and the weak. It is not about dreams instantly fulfilled, as they are in the movies. It is about dreams desperately held to throughout decades of slow progress.