Every now and then, someone will email me and ask if I ever intend to talk about politics again. This blog has sort of turned into the Rob & Schuyler Show, and that is in part intentional, especially for now while the book is new and people are coming here as a result.
But the truth is that I just haven't had much to say about politics. I've become so disheartened by the whole process that honestly, I don't have much to contribute. I've become the saddest of Independents, the kind who has given up on the two parties as Evil (R) and Incompetent (D). I'll never believe in the Republicans because they stand for everything I deem to be foul, but the Democrats? I may actually despise them a little more, since they dress themselves in my progressive values and then achieve almost nothing of worth at all. Both parties have achieved a level of consistency. I can always count on the Republicans to do the wrong thing, and I know the Democrats will follow up by trying half-heartedly to do the right thing, maybe, if the polls say they should, but ultimately fuck it up catastrophically.
Anyway, I've placed a little Obama widget on the sidebar there since unlike the Nixonian Hillary or the Magoo-like McCain, I can at least believe in what he says he stands for, and his much-maligned "lack of experience" means that he hasn't had time to really don the Cloak of Disappointment yet. But in my heart of hearts, I suspect he will. (Bill Clinton did, after all. Good lord, he needs one good and true friend, someone who's not afraid to lean over and say, "You really need to shut the fuck up now.")
Anyway, since the primary race has officially and flatulently stunk up just about every corner of the media and trying to ignore it is becoming impossible, I thought I'd let The Onion speak for me.
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
That was one of the better politics posts I've read in awhile. Particularly the part about Bill Clinton needing to shut up now. But the Onion wins for commending Hillary for her bullshit.
ReplyDeleteThe Evil vs. Incompetent characterization is one that I find a lot of people share, whether they lean left or right. Some are more comforted by competent evil than by incompetent good intentions, and I suppose I understand that to a degree. Personally, being under the boot of a well-oiled evil machine is far more terrifying to me than being bureaucratized into frustration by Keystone Kops, Kafkaesque as it may be. Same reason I make sure all my pets are smaller than me. If need be, I can smack 'em around.
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is the best of both worlds, and of course politics as we know it precludes that possibility. I take comfort in the fact that U.S. politics has been a clusterfook from the get-go. Read Schlesinger's The Age of Jackson and be amazed our democracy lived to tell the tale.