Friday, February 8, 2008

i'm done with rumbling

Alright, enough is enough. For real this time. I mean it. Goodness gracious. And I thought football’s popularity was ridiculous.

Politics has become a sport, that’s all there is to it. It’s a total spectator sport, complete with MVPs, strategies, goals, player stats, coaches, star rookies, dirty tricks, and two teams. It’s not a sport! It’s not supposed to provide entertainment, and it’s not supposed to generate ratings! Politics is supposed to be the process by which we select the individuals who will lead our government and our country, NOT an über-competitive trial where only those who have spent enough time practicing the plays win! Politics should be about honestly deciding who is best suited to make decisions for all of us. Today, it’s all about the win. After that we, the spectators, go home and wait for the next game.

Never have I heard the word electability tossed around so damn much as in today’s political parlance, as if a candidate’s ability to win the office is way more important than how the candidate will lead the office. I know people who would prefer Obama win the nomination and presidency, but voted for Clinton because she’s the stronger player and therefore more likely to win. It’s not about who’s best (or who one feels is best), it’s about who will bring home the title. And nothing has done more to encourage this stupid mindset than the 2-party system.

This system epitomizes sports. It breeds professional players so efficiently that someone who genuinely would be great for our country practically isn’t allowed to be considered for the major leagues without paying their dues to one of the two teams. Worse, it creates a far-reaching mindset of “us against them,” where the home team’s win is more important than what the home team will do with the trophy. Thing is, in real sports, the trophy sits in a glass case and gets dusty, it does not deal with world leaders who would like nothing more than to see both teams – along with the entire stadium and its fans – cease to exist.

This über-competitive spirit is doing more and more and more to damage our country in so many ways. It distracts us from nearly everything else that’s happening, and more importantly the ramifications of what’s happening. We’ve become so blinded by this intense desire to win that we’ve stopped considering what that win will mean. When a Republican introduces a bill to the Senate, it seems the Democrats – before even READING the damn thing – band together to destroy it. AND WE SUPPORT THEM!!! We cheer them on, and praise them for “defeating” the other team’s play! Nevermind what that bill may have meant or done, the important thing is it was killed. And we can trust that every time a move is blocked by one team or another, we’ll hear about it somehow.

Our modern media is relentless in transforming an election into an exciting, action-packed contest. Daily headlines read Clinton, Obama face off, Blitzer: Deny, deny, deny to the bitter end, Clinton's Penn vs. Obama's Axelrod, TIME Poll: Clinton More Beatable than Obama, Bush: Keep a conservative in White House, Clinton polls strongly on Super Tuesday (take a look at the picture on this one!), Inspiration vs. Substance, S. African Head Wary on Circumcision … wait, scratch that one … and Why Romney's Product Launch Failed. PRODUCT LAUNCH??!? He’s not a damn product any more than he’s a damn linebacker, but anything is better than making it sound potentially boring! And yes, I realize how trendy it is to point a bony finger at the morally corrupt mainstream media (MSM) and bellow out (usually in a thick, Sideshow Mel-esque English accent) “there lay the devils!!” While I am fed up with them, truthfully it’s not entirely their fault. It’s ours. It’s us. We’re the problem. We’re the problem because we ask for it and have come to expect and demand it. If a newspaper doesn’t provide action-packed headlines on a daily basis, we ignore them until they go out of business, telling everyone else very clearly that we expect excitement, and if we don’t get it from one source, we’ll find it from another. After all, why read something boring when you COULD be reading about the latest underhanded play?

Honestly though, it’s understandable that we don’t pay attention to anything else: today’s issues are freakishly complicated. Not that we shouldn’t be aware of the issues; we should. But frankly, it’s downright unrealistic – and I think unfair – to ask the average American to understand the complexities of immigration policy and its subsequent economic effects on international trade agreements, or the ancient, nearly incalculable factors behind the hatred between some of the religious sects in the Middle East, or the very precisely worded language of constitutional law and how it’s intended to be used and upheld. Each of these subjects require nearly a lifetime devoted to their study even to begin to understand, and expecting Americans to have the knowledge and understanding to be able to vote based on a candidate’s suggestions in ridiculous! Once again, I’m not advocating ignorance of the issues; I’m suggesting that, given the choice between studying a few dozen white papers on public policy and watching play-by-play coverage of last night’s “GOP v Dem Cage Match: Final Countdown to Super Tuesday,” people are naturally going to choose the one they enjoy more. The problem lies in the fact that we don’t really have any other models from which to base a selection. It’s either study up on public policy and ignore all the heated back and forth, or get sucked into the fray and make your decision based on who puts up a better fight. And what better way to pick a side than joining others who share your own personal value system?

What a stupid thing it is to have an entire country trying to pick a leader based on something as vague and inconstant as values. Let’s be real, it’ll be relatively easy to tell if a candidate has poor principles, and ditto for someone with little personal honor. All you have to do is look at how they’ve lived their life. Beyond that, value takes on a predominantly religious undertone. I’m not even going to start on that, except to say I’m all for not picking a leader who’s going to lead me and the rest of us based on what he reads in a heavily-edited, highly-political, 2000 year old text. Values change over time, and are not representative of all of us. They are, however, deeply based on emotion, making them easy to use to rally hordes of people behind your team. Hence their use in the 2-party system. Just yesterday our president declared “I'm absolutely confident that with your help, we will elect a person who shares our principles.” Nobody questions whether they’re well suited for working with the rest of the world, or if those principles best represent the nation. It’s an appeal to our emotions, rather than our best judgment.

One last thing. I’ve brought up representation twice now, and I think it warrants a quick explanation. There is no way we could ever elect anyone who represents all of us. There are too many of us, we are too widely varied, and we don’t really even know what we’re talking about when it comes to governance. Full representation just is not possible, which obviously causes problems in a representative democracy. The 2-party system addresses this by offering people the option of voluntarily aligning themselves with one of the two parties, thereby offering representation even if the candidate isn’t really all that like you. This is where a third option for choosing a candidate needs to come in. We need to start evaluating candidates based on their reason and intelligence, instead of how well they represent us. I don’t want a candidate who’s plan for Iraq and the Middle East vibes with my own, because I know basically nothing about Middle Eastern politics, country reconstruction, and negotiating treaties. In short, I wouldn’t trust me to formulate a plan, so why on earth would I vote for someone who’s plan meshes with mine? I want to vote for someone who I feel I trust. Someone who is intelligent and reasonable enough to track down and utilize the world’s foremost minds in policy, and build a plan based on their consensus. Not a plan based on the consensus of a country full of people who know very little about the problem at hand.

I don’t want someone who promises to run the country how I’d run the country. I want someone who promises to run the country well.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

fun with random emoting

When I get excited – for any reason, good or bad – I lose my ability to communicate. I’ve begun noticing when I’m calm I can be articulate, reasoned, concise, and clear. Anything else, I start rambling, stuttering, forgetting simple words, talking myself (and whatever I’m talking about) in circles, getting further and further from the point, and ultimately losing track of the entire discussion. Not to mention supremely weirding people out. What royally sucks is it’s exactly those times that I’m discussing something I’m passionate about that I want to explain why. It’s so goddamn frustrating when I’m talking about something exciting with someone, and it feels like my passion and my ability to impart said passion are in this diabolically evil inverse relationship. One that does imply causation, if there was any question. And for as long as I can remember, it’s made me feel like a damn idiot.

And people wonder why I prefer to communicate in writing, where I can stare at the computer screen with a blank look on my face without it staring back, wondering when I’m gonna come back to earth.