Politics

I read blogs, and watch the news, and listen to the radio and I am amazed and stupified by all things “political” - that anyone would attach such importance to abstract, ephemeral concepts such as “conservative”, “liberal” - or even worse “Republican”, “Democrat”, “Libertarian”, etc - to assign them concrete, measurable values…. it’s so sad.

And that’s especially magnified when you do something like truly experience life: outdoors, nature, people, love, kids - all that which is available for all to enjoy, while so many lock themselves in their own little self-righteous dungeons and choose sides against one another.

Politics as it stands today - me against you, him against her, us against them against us - will eventually be lethal.

What do I mean eventually? It already is.

If you truly feel proud to align yourself with one of these artificial, arbitrary entities (and I don't mean registering as one party or the other in order to vote - that's required by today's voting laws in some cases), if you feel that calling yourself, proudly, a Republican or Democrat...a conservative or liberal, if you feel that it's more important to align yourself with people who are more concerned with exercising their own egos than serving their country - I have no use for you.

Groups of arbitrary and unrelated "values" have been randomly co-opted by either side, based on which issue came up under which politician's watch, and they added it to their "platform". Humans don't need to think that way, they don't need to let a "party" speak for them, they need to speak for themselves. You need to speak for yourself, decide for yourself. Think for yourself.

Stop the gamesmanship. Stop the childishness. Stop the foolishness. Stop the endless waste of time pursuing political ends instead of the good of the country and the people.

And please, all of you, stop perpetuating the myth and understand the reality. We have to work together - truly together - to succeed.

Forget abortion. Forget global warming. Forget immigration. Forget the war. Forget taxation, forget big government, forget welfare, forget parties, pork, platforms, policies and philosophies.

But don't forget to think for yourself.

Please.

UPDATE (05/23/07): For some reason partisanship or "Label Politics" extends down to the local level, to the extent that we still insist on mainting party affiliations for local races. As if that made a difference when you're trying to decide whether to redraw school districts, repair roads, set taxes, improve law enforcement or renovate historic buildings. If a county desperately needs an increase in property tax to fund a needed initiative, Republicans - being the party of small government and low taxes - would likely oppose it, regardless of whether it was fiscally necessary or not. Because that's what they, as Republicans, are "supposed to believe", or because that's what their most influential constituents want them to believe. It has little to do with whether or not a property tax increase is actually necessary and good for the people.

That's what I mean when I say arbitrarily subdividing ourselves into teams and rooting for the teams regardless of the game is wrong. It's fine when we're talking College Football, but not for government and social issues.