Politics does achieve positive change. We are witnessing the gradual collapse in support for legal discrimination against gay people. The civil rights revolution did happen. Women did get suffrage. Prohibition was repealed.
Many of these things take a lot longer than we seem to be patient for.
How is this defeatist? Politics is mostly shouting, elections, and even more shouting, and then, maybe, some highly inefficient process of introducing some changes. Instead it would be better if people went and actually did something.
I don't know much about prohibition, but the other things are, from what I can see, results of years (sometimes decades) long PR campaigns - in books, movies, on the streets, and now on the Internet. Especially women and gay rights are examples of this - constantly on the media; the topic is pretty much shoved down our throats, every time, all the time[0]. Legislation follows social change, not the other way around, and social change is made by media.
[0] - you can notice this even on HN recently. Just pretty much in every other thread somebody starts talking about gender, even if it's completely irrelevant and off-topic.
You've just described the political process that's existed in the West for centuries. Decades of PR campaigns (even before there was a mass media), steady protests and changing of minds, and then the politicians noticing and introducing legislation. Women's suffrage took almost 100 years in the UK and USA. Prohibition took about 50-60 years to enact and another 10-13 to repeal.
That IS doing something, even if it is frustratingly slow.
Social change is made by people, the media just is an amplifier that seeks controversial topics that garner attention (and thus revenue).
Though, the reason you hear about gender on places like HN is not the media.... it is because this forum has been a nexus of controversy on gender issues in tech, with thousands of posts on a variety of incidents. People are fed up with the status quo and arguing about it. It is no different from how pretty much every thread on HN brings up the NSA and Snowden these days even if it too is irrelevant or mostly off-topic. Online communities have meta-threads that last years, Slashdot had at least 4 or 5 in the 90's to early 2000's.
Politics does achieve positive change. We are witnessing the gradual collapse in support for legal discrimination against gay people. The civil rights revolution did happen. Women did get suffrage. Prohibition was repealed.
Many of these things take a lot longer than we seem to be patient for.