A Completely Unwarranted Foray into Politics

Election time is about to kick into high gear with Barack Obama expected to announce his vice presidential candidate this week, and despite my best efforts to develop an interest in the candidates, their issues, and the political situation around the world, I just can't bring myself to give a shit.

This unbridled apathy has nothing to do with these specific candidates. I've NEVER been able to work myself into a frenzy about any political issue. Religious issues are another matter. I'll bitch and moan about organized religion and imaginary deities and debate such issues with anyone willing to put up a good fight until the day I die and go nowhere. But following politics seems like the biggest waste of time to me.

This is not to say that I don't have preferences. I tend to favor the democrats most of the time. This is mostly due to the republicans' gradual shift toward embracing fundamental religious values. Republicans love to say that God is on their side. Well you know what? If God is on their side, I want to be on the other side. I don't care who the opposition is. I like the idea of taking on God and his heavenly hierarchy.

But as far as the actual issues are concerned, I don't fully side with either political party. When left to their own devices, Republicans tend to develop a militaristic attitude toward foreign affairs and a penny-pinching mentality toward domestic economic policies. Democrats, on the other hand, will spend money on completely inane programs in an attempt to control things that can't (or shouldn't) be controlled.

I've read very intelligent, rational, and thought-provoking material from conservative and liberal writers. I like a writer who's willing to say, "Look, I think the opposition raises a good point, but this other way is the best solution that we can practically do at this time." The issues are complex, but voters don't want to hear about complexity. They don't want legislators to compromise; they want THEIR idea to be implemented NOW!

Take global warming for instance. Very few people are arguing these days that there is no climate shift, but there seems to be no agreement on what to do about it. Awhile ago, I learned about cars being powered by corn oil. I thought to myself, "Hey, this seems like a cool idea! Corn is a renewable resource that grows every year. This is great." Then someone brought to my attention the fact that the amount of farmland needed to produce enough corn for the number of cars in the world is staggering! According to Wikipedia (hardly a credible source, I know, but they cite other scientific studies), in order to use 100% solar energy to grow corn to produce ethanol, the consumption of ethanol to replace current U.S. petroleum use alone would require about 75% of all cultivated land on Earth, with no ethanol for other countries or sufficient food for humans or animals.

I don't know whether that's true or not, but I don't really care. The point is that it's a complex issue, and there will need to be compromise regarding the solution. So all of you guys out in the far-right and far-left fields, guess what? The right answer is somewhere in the middle. And you know what else? Sometimes the right answer is a compromise that pleases no one. Back in the 18th century, the drafters of the Constitution had long and heated debates over the legality of slavery in the newly formed United States. As you might imagine, the delegates from the Northern states favored abolition while the Southern representatives wanted to keep making black folk do their bidding. Neither side would approve the Constitution without their views being represented. Compromise was absolutely necessary. The damn country never would have been formed without the delegates agreeing to allow individual states to decide on the issue of slavery. This obviously came back to bite them in the ass 100 years later, but at the time, there was simply no other way to handle the situation. Sometimes the right decision is also the wrong decision. It sucks (and can create a cognitive dissonance that might cause you to piss your pants and punch a kitten in frustration), but it's often true.

That's why I don't want to vote for a single party. I think both parties are needed. The democrats keep the republicans from shitting all over the Bill of Rights and from pissing off the rest of the world, and the republicans keep the democrats from pulling all power away from the state governments and from coming up with new ways to spend money that don't make any damn sense.

And I just don't care. The struggle of "Conservative" vs. "Liberal" will continue to be waged no matter who wins, and the struggle itself is what is most important. If you study the history of any country, you'll see the same arguments going on at any time. Roman and Greek philosophers would lament high taxes, the ineffectiveness of the Senate, the corruption of the emperor, unethical wars, etc. It's the same shit we bitch about today. Take a look at some of Mark Twain's stuff. A lot of his political and social commentary still holds water over a century later.

Hell, back in 1776 when Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, he said that the best government would be run by a benevolent dictator. A representative democracy was simply the best thing that they could come up with that had any chance at stability. Everything happens really slowly, but that same tedious process of debate and investigation that annoys so many people is what keeps a few people from making trendy but ill-considered government changes.

That's why it won't matter. Hell, George W. Bush has one of the worst presidential approval ratings in history, but he didn't really fuck up the country THAT much because the other side was there to bitch him out. And if my predictions are correct, Obama will be elected in November (because the economy is in a recession and people always demand political change during a recession), and the cycle will begin anew. The wind will continue to blow back and forth, and when I'm on my deathbed, the political climate will probably look a lot like it does right now.

Or maybe sadistic emperor penguins will be ruling the world. I dunno. This is why I don't blog about legitimate topics. I seldom know what the hell I'm talking about.

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Politics: A topic that should be left to bloggers who actually have a readership of more than 20 people.