Stupid Politics

[hesperornis]

You know, I gave up hoping for the perfect candidates a long time ago, but I was really looking forward to having a couple of really solid choices this time around.  I was cautiously enthusiastic about both candidates and their respective VP choices. 

Now I find out that Governor Palin is a friggin' creationist. 

I hate to be a one-issue voter, especially since deciding to vote pro-life was one of the main reasons I voted for Bush, and I eventually ended up disagreeing with virtually everything else he did.  I also hate to reflexively vote against the Republicans.  I'm not a fan of heavy government involvement, and my dad keeps telling me just how much "universal health care" is not going to work as promised. 

But I have very, very few buttons to be pushed that I really feel I know something about, and keeping "Intelligent Design" out of science classrooms is one of them.  Normally, I would assume that the VP doesn't really have that much say in such things, but I've been recently reading about how Dick Cheney personally managed to see to it that the Endangered species act was violated, in Oregon, back in 2001, with the blessing of the National Science Foundation.  So I guess there's some clout to be had.  And there are enough people willing to believe the line that "all views deserve to be heard" (so go take a comparative religions class!  grumblegrr...) that it would worry me a bit to have another person in the White House who thinks that ID is science.  

It's tempting to give up what research I'd been doing into the issues and just resign myself to voting Democratic, but I still feel the need to try to convince myself that Obama is all we've been hoping for... or at least a little bit of what we've been hoping for. 

Please forgive this barely informed ramble.  *puts away soapbox*  God I hate politics so much.

Comments

[superquail.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read George Orwell's "Animal Farm"? In order to make the complex philosophy accessible even to the really dumb sheep they developed the chant of "Two legs bad, Four legs good!" Then when the pigs started walking around on two legs and taking on all the trappings of the humans they had over thrown, they changed the chant to "Two legs bad, Four legs better!"

[hesperornis.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, I read it when I was in 6th grade, actually. I didn't get a lot of the political details at the time, but the gist was obvious. That's not quite the vibe i was getting from the conventions, though--it was more like "OMG it's like a NASCAR race let's cheer on our guy!!!!" You know?

[superquail.livejournal.com]

Sports are an interesting cultural milieu that people like to tap into when they need that dose of mindless enthusiasm. I read a Dave Barry column once where he was talking about how people seriously believe that if they cheer hard enough for their team, that their support really makes the team play better. I am not sure if you could ever prove or disprove such an assertion, but it does seem to be widely believed. I think in some ways that's what an embattled political party does to: "just believe hard enough and we can make a miraculous comeback!" is what happens when you no longer have any policies or ideas that appeal to the people.