Dichotomies Rot Brains

I flipped the image of Kerry. Don't worry, he's not one of those people...


I love politics. I'm that guy who turned 18 and was more excited about voting than buying porn, though it's all too clear and sad which I've done more of. I get excited about just about every damn Supreme Court ruling. I read the election guides that come in the mail cover-to-cover like it's some fucking magical tome from angels or something. I get really excited about propositions. Election day is like a holiday to me, but I'm about to give the fuck up and hide under a rock until December.

The insightful reader will recognize that politics have sort of replaced sports in my life. If the insightful reader were to say that to me, however, I might just throw something at the insightful reader. Politics are so conceptually different from sports. Politics is about picking something you believe in, something you think will make a positive difference in the world. Choosing your political "team" should be something you do by reading, contemplating, asking questions, studying history, and keeping an open mind. Candidates need voters and advocates, not cheerleaders, and not fanatics.



This election isn't about the politics and ideology of Kerry and those of Bush. No, it's much simpler than that. It's about the Red Sox and the Rangers. Actually, baseball may even be too highbrow -- it's more like boxing, or better yet: pro wrestling. If political discourse has really become so mindless that you can read that last sentence without calling me stupid, something has gone terribly wrong.



Political conventions no longer serve their original purpose -- find anyone who watched the Democrat's convention this year and ask them if they can tell you what a delegate is, or what they do. The primaries determine everything now, so the conventions have become pep rallies. Take a look at them -- they're one step away from face paint and foam hands.

America is -- and I'm not sure if this applies anywhere else -- a strongly divided nation. We don't understand shades of gray, and we know that the other guy is wrong because we're right. Coke families and Pepsi families. Ford men and Chevy men. Democrats and those filthy, stinking fascist world-destroying Republicans. I assure you that you will never be getting a refill of your Bud Light (you're no pansy Miller drinker, are you?) and overhear "I like Bush's rhetoric about smaller government, but it seems more than a little hypocritical coming from the guy that created the largest bureaucracy in our nation's history." No, you'll hear "Bush is an idiot and a liar" or "how could anyone vote for a fag like Kerry?"

The masses aren't mumbling about policy, they're screaming about who they can't stand. This weekend, I wrote a little tool to analyze people's online journals to try to guess who they would be most likely to vote for. I expected people to tell me it was wrong, but it surprised me that the phrase of choice is "guessed me totally wrong." Totally wrong? There's only two goddamned options; How can it be anything but plain wrong? Also, note that it guessed "me" totally wrong, not "my vote." Having a different political opinion isn't "we looked at the same facts and came to different conclusions", it's "I'm one of these, and you're one of those." I mean, c'mon, I clearly have a star on my belly -- you're not calling me one of those other Sneetches, are you?



I would love to blame the Rush Limbaugh / Bill O'Reilly / Michael Moore clones out there, but it's not their fault. They're popular because we have such a voracious appetite for this watered down black-and-white nuance-free political cheerleading. We're not stupid because they're on TV, they're on TV because we're stupid.

Half of the nation is upset (rightly, in my opinion) about the Bush administration's handling of the last four years. The Patriot act is stomping on civil rights, an open effort was made to subvert Constitutional protections by holding terror suspects in Cuba and Iraq, the nation went to war on bad intelligence, we were mislead about connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda, "No Child Left Behind" is a disaster, there was an attempt to amend the constitution to fit some religious dogma, stem cell research has been crippled, the list goes on... So what does this upset half decide to do? Pick someone who supports almost every single one of those policies, just less adamantly. Why? Because he can win.

Politics aren't about winning or losing anymore. They're about making the other team lose. It's like rooting against the Yankees after your team's been eliminated from the playoffs, just because they're those motherfucking Yankees. Just as much careful thought and political soul-searching goes into rooting against them as goes into rooting against the Republicans.



So here's the sick punchline: I'm voting for Kerry because I think it's important that Bush loses. Don't call me a hypocrite just yet; The Democrats aren't my "team." I have no allegiance to them. From the day Kerry is inaugurated, I will be studying everything he does. If he slips up, I'll be right there with his most vocal critics. If we all did that, kept vigilant in our pursuit of good representation in office, we wouldn't be stuck with this 'lesser of two evils' voting predicament we've had as long as I can remember.