Political Rocket Science

The phone is silent tonight.  No one is ringing the doorbell.  The mailbox is empty.

Yep, election day must be over.  I'm no longer the most important person in the world.  I've gone back to being a frickin' number.  Just like you.

Americans have made voiced their two biggest concerns: 

1) We don't want to catch Ebola.

2) We want to smoke pot.

Duly noted.

I reckon.

Yes, the people have spoken.  And the politicians have said what you've wanted to hear to get your vote.  The lucky ones have been elected.  Now they can start concentrating on their personal agendas and their special interests.  

That's politics.  Always has been, always will be.  

I don't think there is a single Representative or Senator who truly cares for his/her constituency.  You don't become an elected official because you are a caring person.  Politics is a nasty, dirty, cut-throat business.  Only the dirtiest win.

In their deepest, darkest recesses, every politician is a devious, duplicitous asshole.

I know what you're thinking;  I'm a sore loser.  My candidate didn't win, right?  

You couldn't be more wrong.  Let's just say that politics ain't my bag, man.

First, I am ridiculously cynical.  I don't know if I've always been that way or if it has been a learned behavior... that's up for debate (my guess is it's a learned behavior).  But I have a tendency to see things with a darker perspective; the glass is always half-empty.

Secondly, I've always been too open to the other side of an argument.  Because of that, I'd make a poor politician.

Now there are certain things that are not up for debate.

For instance, I think all pedophiles and sexual predators should be executed and their organs donated to people waiting for livers and lungs and hearts and kidneys.  Is that harsh?  If your child hasn't been raped, maybe.  So should we wait until it happens to your child?

I do not oppose gay marriage.  Who am I to judge love?  And don't tell me gay marriage is a mockery of the institution of marriage because I've seen many straight couples do a great job of that all on their own. 

I do not think health insurance is a God-given entitlement.  If you want it, earn the right to have it (i.e. get a damn job).

But I also think marijuana should be legalized.  (Tax the hell out of it and balance the budget).  Those who want to smoke pot already do so (illegal or not) and it's not going to make non-cannibus users tempted to become pot heads.  It's really not that complicated.

Indeed, I find that I'm all over the so-called political map.  Many could argue this means I'm soft, indecisive or unintelligent.  And that's fine.  You can think that.

But as Billy Joel once said in song, "Black and white is how it should be, but shades of grey are all that I see."  

That's me.

Radical left wingers and radical right wingers have always fascinated me.  My thought process for either has always been, "How can you be that f*cking blind to everything else?"  I've always felt that voting along party-lines is equivalent to radicalism.

And radicalism in any form is not healthy and it's not smart.  It reflects a lack of empathy, a lack of compassion and a lack of self-awareness.  Simply put, radicalism is dangerous.

To quote from the same song, Billy Joel also philosophizes,

"With the wisdom of years, I try to reason things out.

And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts.  

Save us all from arrogant men 

and all the causes they're for.

I won't be righteous again.  

I'm not that sure anymore."

A life truth: whenever looking for a way to express oneself, just comb through the Billy Joel catalogue.