The Zombie Politic

Back during the 80s, there was this kind of sensationalized genre of media that dealt with the theme of massive social dedication to causes . . . usually these causes being governments of the Communist kind. You would see this a lot. People in uniform, their souls and identity stripped down to the basics of just living for the State.  

As a kid in America, this idea was considered about as horrible and offensive as things could get.  We were the Home of the Free, after all. We celebrated the individual (as long as they weren't TOO individual) and would never allow ourselves to become mindless drones for the State.  This worked, actually. A lot of  us grew up with a profound jaded indifference to the State, one that the government continually reinforced by sucking.

Now here we are in another election year, and I find myself less able to think about politics and how it applies to more and more about how well they are able to present themselves. Which party is doing the less idiotic job of gaining voters? Which party is able to comfort their base while at the same time reaching out to those outside of it? I'm kind of guessing it will be neither.

If you read the blog, you certainly know I care about many political issues. I want people to have the right to marry whomever they want. I want people to be in control of their own bodies. I want people to be able to protect themselves, have stable jobs, and stable communities.

It's just that I don't TRUST politicians to help me with the issues I care about.  It seems like half of them have better things to do and the other half think my ideas are somehow evil. None of them appear to be working for a kind of mutual common good. They all seem to be far more interested in the next speech, the next election, and winning at whatever cost.

So politicians will have their conventions.  They'll do their songs and dances. They'll spend insane amounts of money and get people all emotional about them. At the end of the day, part of the people in the country will be happy. Some of them will feel like they somehow got cheated.  The rest of us will just breath a sigh of relief that the whole thing is over for a while.