When Facebook Becomes Blogging

So.... as an artist who did try (and fail) to become a political journalist or scientist, the problem with artists becoming active politically is that so many artists know absolutely nothing about politics, and that's clear every time they open their mouths. There isn't a single statistic they can cite (let alone a wrong one), and if you talk to them about concepts from various political thinkers, they don't have the faintest grasp of what you're talking about or why it's important. I've spent my thirties in the world of the arts, and after having talked to hundreds of artists over these years, it's pretty clear that very few of them have done any political reading at all aside from the fashionable book du jour that predigests the world for them in a way that they can take as a theology, and whose concepts they entirely forget about two months later. Generally speaking, the arts are about believing in illusions, and people in the arts are better than anybody at believing in illusions, once upon a time that illusion was god, now it's various forms of progressive social justice, and from the point of view of actionable reality, there's very little difference between them because so many of the concepts involve invisible structural forces that are impossible to prove. So as artists, it's fine if you have neither the time, desire, nor capacity to make a study of important political questions, but if you don't, don't make political art, because art in which you misunderstand the materials you're working with is, almost by definition, bad art, and if the art is dependent on you understanding the political situation, you better damn well make sure you understand it thoroughly.