Saturday, September 8, 2012

I'm done with politics for a while

Normally, I follow politics with some interest.  I'm a person with opinions, and I always hope my moral opinions will be reflected in policy.
There come a time, however, when I get overwhelmed by the stupidity of the rhetoric on both sides.  They simply cannot stop flapping their jaws, and declaring that the outcome of this ONE election will determine whether America stands or dies.
Obama is not some Karl Marx of a socialist who has single-handedly bankrupt our country because Satan told him to.
Romney is not some ruthless Ayn-Randian fat-cat out to grind the poor into a massive sausage to beat gay people to death with.
Seriously, folks, you give these schmucks too much credit!  They are both reasonably-experienced, notably-MODERATE politicians who are equally beholden to their parties' whims.

I just don't care anymore.  Honestly, I'm only a SOCIAL liberal, so I'm not really rabid about the economic and health-care policies of either side... Not that I don't care, I'm glad we're all talking about fixing these things, but I'm acutely aware that the national debt has been consistently ignored by BOTH parties for decades, and only now that it's a crisis do they start pointing fingers (at eachother, of course).  The proposed solutions are not much different from party to party now, and the "big" debates are over tiny details.  If all the money spent campaigning and squabbling over these things were put toward the public good instead, maybe we wouldn't be in this bind.

So I've stopped reading about politics.  The conventions put the final nail in the coffin for me.  Maybe I won't vote: my vote for a presidential candidate doesn't actually affect the outcome anyway.  The illusion of control is all we get from casting a vote.
Frankly, I can't see a whole lot of difference between parties anyhow, so even if my vote determined the whole election, I don't think I'd feel a lot of control.

In the end, all empires fall.  All civilizations collapse.  Ours will, too, at some point... who cares when?  Maybe Obama will create health-care policy so inefficient that the overspending sends us into so much debt the Chinese will own us.  Maybe Romney will get us into a war with Iran that bankrupts us, and then the Chinese will own us.  If we're that close to the edge, we're going over sometime soon anyway.

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