Column: We must fight voter apathy

Column: We must fight voter apathy Categories: Opinion Column: We must fight voter apathy “It’s no easy task to sort through an excess of polarizing, contradictory and sometimes bizarre opinions. But I urge you: don’t sink back into yourself.” Eva Patel, Staff Writer • October 14, 2026 Andrew Dai “I voted today” stickers sit on a table outside Frank Porter Graham Student Union on Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. Walking through Polk Place between classes, my strategy is simple: AirPods in, noise cancellation on, eyes trained on the bricks in front of me with one foot in front of the other as quickly as the crowd allows. I’ve become an expert at blocking out the shouts, ignoring the signs and going about my day. Unsurprisingly, I’ve fallen into the same habit while reading the news, barely taking in the headlines and clips screaming for my attention. It’s strange because I wouldn’t consider myself ignorant or apolitical by any means. But if I claim to care about politics and what goes on in the world, why do I keep shutting out all the noise? Literary scholar Bruce Robbins has a term to describe this experience; his idea of the “sweatshop sublime” builds on philosopher Immanuel Kant’s theory of the sublime. To Kant, the sublime is the feeling produced when we are faced with something so great in size or power that it exceeds our ability to comprehend it. We become acutely aware of the limits of our perception — of how we can recognize the vastness but not grasp it.  Robbins applies this idea to the modern global systems behind the sweatshop. He describes those moments of insight we have, when we suddenly recognize that something as ordinary as the clothes we wear is connected to a vast, global network of labor, exploitation and consumption. The realization is paralyzing: we understand the scale of the system and our place in it, but not how to act within it. Faced with something so much larger than us, we do nothing at all. We “sink back” into our lives.  To me, politics is a sort of sublime — unfathomably complex and vast in its history, systems, ideologies and problems. I can understand that millions of people come together to make a change that will impact our foreseeable future, but never fully grasp this idea at scale.  And now, more than ever, we are constantly confronted with politics’ enormity. The media is constant evidence of this overwhelming vastness. Every time it presents me with a breaking story, I become more aware of just how much I do not ⁠— and, perhaps will ⁠never — know. As Robbins put it, “access to the global scale is not access to a commensurate power of action on the global scale.” Knowing more about the system does not mean gaining the power to change it. Of course, this overwhelming feeling is just one of the many reasons people my age may feel less compelled to engage with politics. In the 2024 election, Gen Z had the lowest turnout of any age group, with roughly half of the 41 million eligible voters staying home. Some of that comes from how disconnected our political leaders can feel from the issues that shape our lives ⁠— this leaves the choices on the ballot feeling less like an expression of what we actually believe in and more like picking an option that is tolerable. And when we look at just how inefficient the political system has been in our lifetimes, it’s easy to lose faith in it.  Despite this perceived apathy, there are still those who choose to participate anyway  ⁠— to swim upstream. I respect people who campaign, organize and advocate for what they believe in, so much so that their commitment tends to make me feel inadequate. In the same way I feel like my understanding of politics will never be sufficient, I see people who seem to know exactly what they believe in and exactly what they are willing to do about it — and I wonder if I am doing enough. And I think, for a while, this feeling kept me from talking about it at all. If I don’t know everything, I can’t speak on anything.  But since this November’s midterm is the first election I can vote in, I’ve had a lot more conversations and learned that I am not alone in this feeling, and that my peers disengage from politics for a variety of reasons. The point of this piece isn’t to convince you to become the next Quad tabler or even an Instagram reposter. But I think the solution is truly as simple as they all say: vote — and vote informed. Ultimately, despite how overwhelming it can feel, our duty is to make as much sense of it as we can. I’ve learned to be genuinely grateful for those who do advocate loudly, and for the sheer amount of information and news we have access to. It’s no easy task to sort through an excess of polarizing, contradictory and sometimes bizarre opinions. But I urge you: don’t sink back into yourself.  My one vote can feel like a small, unassuming power compared to the sprawling, powerful entity I imagine politics to be. But it can be comforting to know that no individual vote has to carry the weight of the entire system. And maybe, commensurate power can be achieved by being one among millions. @dailytarheel | [email protected] 0 Like This Story Share on Facebook Share on X Email this Story Print this Story More to Discover More in Opinion Satire: Cow searches for success in Chapel Hill after beef industry mass-layoffs Column: We need to stop romanticizing college Column: How far do we go before we question our support of United States Athletics? 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