I hate wasting my time. It’s not that I’m that important. It’s not like I am making money in large enough sums that I could try and measure it by the minute, as in “he makes $109 a second”. (Which I believe is what Al Gore earns to peddle his fear-based initiatives.) I just hate wasting my time, because it’s the only thing we really have. Even though it’s a man-made constraint and has no meaning beyond what we apply to it, time is the one thing that every person personally owns. I may not own the “stuff” that I’d like to, but I own my time. Self-employment (and a healthy distain for “organized” industry) has taught me that.
So how is it, after twelve months of campaigning, we can sit on the eve of the Iowa caucus and have a statistical tie in both major parties? How is it that all of the front-runners, on both sides, have managed to move the needles on the meter exactly nil? (Worse, if truth be told, we’ve gone from “It’s Hilary and Rudy.” to “It could be anybody.”)
I have had to listen to this crap for twelve months, for what? A last minute montage of all the major candidates running around shaking hands and kissing babies? As though that’s supposed to affect a persons vote.
After all the crazy shenanigans in the Democratic party, from Hillary’s insistence that she has the experience, followed closely by her inability to cope with being “picked on” by a bunch of men, to B. Hussein Obama’s pitch for hope, followed by the “youthful indiscretion” of cocaine use, to John Edwards very expensive haircut, followed up with his recent “I’m for the middleclass” farce, you’d think that somehow the Dems might have sorted through all of this after 9-12 MONTHS to pick some sort of front runner. But no, it’s anybody’s “game to win”.
And don’t think the Republican’s are any better. They’re all playing some sort of shell game with their records. “I AM a Reagan Republican,” they all say. “Just ignore my stance on guns, abortion, health care, gay marriage, free trade, and taxes.” It’s impossible to figure the GOP guys out, because if you watch the mainstream media, they’re virtually indistinguishable from one another. (Except for Fred Thompson who hasn’t established anything beyond the idea that he’s an actor who is channeling some kind of autumnal bear.) They all say they’re not the Democrats. That’s essentially their theme…they like God and they’re not Democrats.
Until you start looking at things like voting records and proposed legislation (you know, pesky little things like the truth), and you notice that what they call “not being a Democrat” looks suspiciously like being a Democrat. Things like, voting for tax increases (Huckabee), voting to limit free-speech (McCain), being anti-gun and pro gay-marriage (Guilianni), etc. ad nauseam.
So the upshot of all this campaigning is that we are exactly where we were when everyone got all there underwear in a bunch because “this guy” or “that guy” or “that woman who might be a guy” threw their collective hats in the ring for president all those months ago. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been kind of fun, but still undeniably, one gigantic, hugely colossal waste of everyone’s time.
And we wonder why more people aren’t interested in the democratic process in this country.
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