I am Tired of it!

It is less than a month before the elections and I have had enough! I am SO tired of it all. Most have made up their minds months, if not years, ago; so why do they spend millions of dollars trying to get our vote? But that is not enough! First, we have to put up with every other advertisement being a political one. Second, we have to put up with debates over everything we already know about. Third, we have to put up with the news telling us what they said, which we already knew. Fourth, we have to put up with partisans from both sides telling us what they said that we already know and what they think about it, which we already knew too. Fifth, we have to put up with the news telling us what the partisans said about what the candidates said about the issues we already knew about. And so on … and so on … and so on ….

I am tired of it. I have taken to watching the history channel and checking in on the news every now and again just to make sure the world hasn’t changed. H.L. Mencken says, “Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right.” I think I will stay off cable news until the first Tuesday in November and think seriously about investing in TiVo or some such device.

It is unfortunate because I have seen a change in the last 10 years in our electorate. Many people claim that we are more polarized now than we have ever been before, but I don’t think so. I think we are more showy than ever before and less substantive than every before. The important decisions of war, poverty, education, and security of all kids are still there to be made but no single president can make a difference in those kids of decisions. The best a president can do is nudge the nation in a certain direction and hope the one that follows will keep nudging, after decades this behemoth of a democracy might alter it’s course by a few degrees. Even a HUGE, life-changing event like 9/11 didn’t alter our course by much, we are now, three years later, back to the same bickering and division we were then. I am tired of it.

I am tired of it but I am also hopeful. I know that we will be done in a few weeks with another round of this messy democratic process, and we will have a breather for a few months. I happen to agree with Winston Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others.”
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