There's something odd in realizing that something I thought I could enjoy starts giving me real problems.



I love stories, I love information and die for seeing how people react to the same information with wildly different attitudes and opinions. I love politics and policy and watching the waves and movement of governance. I'm fascinated by all the information available in the news and I always want to know what's going on with other people. I will always be mystified by people who can't be bothered to keep up with the news. I may as well subsist on bread and water if I'm not going to know my current events and how things got there.

But I go through cycles of not wanting to keep up. Of being so frustrated by everything I hear and hating every new name I learn on the news. People can be so hateful and careless and I have to continually remind myself that the people I hear about in the news don't necessarily pay as close attention or have as much access to as many outlets as I do.

I'm a subscriber to KCRW, the Santa Monica-based public radio station. If I owned a decent TV I would probably be a subscriber to KCET, the local PBS station.

Yeah, I'm a commie. learn it. Love it. I've heard far, far worse.

I have a subscription to both Time and Newsweek which I read voraciously. When I get bored at work and LiveJournal is dead I turn to the CNN, FoxNews (everyone covers the news differently and I get curious about their angles - but I maintain my suspicions of people who don't get their news any other place), and MSNBC sites. I try to stay away from Underreported and The Memory Hole because they're HUGE time sinks and therefore a bad idea while I'm at work. I never quite developed the habit of checking online rags from other countries, though I suppose I ought to - BBC, the Guardian, Haaretz, al Jazeera (if you think they're anti-American and pro-terrorists, well you're not actually looking around very much, they've been banned from more than a few Middle Eastern countries for being inflammatory - read: progressive).

But it's starting to hit me, and hit me hard. I haven't been sleeping as well unless I'm exhausted because I'm so stressed and it's so hard to avoid thoughts that turn to the news and the latest horribleness people have proven themselves capable of whether it's decapitating civilians, besieging and then blowing up a crowded school or ganging up on a politician to impugne his honorable military service.

It's keeping me up at night, it's making my temper run rough during the day, it's making me seek ulterior motives in every word and phrase. I lost my taste for arguing politics on chat boards a while back. Besides usually being totally fruitless, it brings out a side of me I'd rather not see. And all I can see in the virtual people is the simulacrum their words represent, and it's often, I think, a mirror of myself. I'm just guessing of course. I am a liberal after all. And deep down I want to think that everyone's decent if you just give 'em a chance. But we're arguing, we're always arguing, we boot up our machines open bookmarks and before the page is fully loaded, we're arguing again. So I never see the decent people on the other end. And they never see me be decent. I never get a chance to hold open a door for them. We never get to talk about the most beautiful places we've been to. We never discuss the advantages of being able to fly over going invisible.

We just argue. We we make snarky comments. We cite sources from hither and yon, we take high roads, we take low roads, we run off on tangents to prove our guy is better than theirs. We make hyperbolic statements, we offer bait, we trick, we manipulate, we bluster, we curse and we pass bucks on behalf of our chosen political champions. We look suspiciously on any statement that cannot clearly be distinguished as partisan. And moderates who switch allegiance at a moment's notice fucking piss us off.

So I'm getting as far away from arguing politics as possible. It's just not good for me. so it drives me nuts when the political arguements come and find me. I can shut up. I can try to ignore it and hope it goes away, but the problem is I've played the staying quiet card before and things always goes wrong. I HATE it when people assume I agree with them because I haven't disagreed yet. I HATE it when so much is assumed about me because of where I live or how/what I worship. I can't keep quiet because the discourse gets taken over and directed by them, the people who think they know what's good for me and that if I don't have it as good as they do, then I'm not applying myself. From a political standpoint the national discourse has been taken over by one party because the other party spent some 12 to 16 years nodding off, telling itself the other party is just blowing off steam and doesn't really mean it.

I'm frustrated by how divisive things are precisely due to the two party system. I'm disgusted by both parties, frankly. I inhereted my father's distrust of the RNC and rare has been the Republican official who can convince me to listen more than half heartedly. The DNC has been disappointing for as long as I can remember. Uncharitably, I think of them as bumbling idiots, stumbling around a blazing inferno sparked by a toaster with a box of baking soda because that's how you stop an electrical fire. I've seriously wondered if there are sleeper cells within the DNC working to make sure that only the blandest, most milquetoast politicians get nominated and promoted. If there are no sleeper cells then Terry McAuliff (the party chair) and his ilk need to fired forthwith.

Oh well. The upshot for me is that I'm not a Democrat. I refuse to be associated with a major party that can't find its ass with both hands. I've joined the Green party, because while they do need to get their act together, they're earnest and they don't treat party loyalists like we'll be there no matter what garbage they try to get us to support or how much they take us for granted. Plus I *heart* Peter Camejo.

I voted for Nader last time and was thinking of doing it again before he was tossed off the ballot in California. But I recently realized I probably wouldn't vote for him this time because I don't think he has leadership experience within the military or really any other military experience. I think the leader for these times needs to have some background in the military as well as in other fields. I suppose I've come to see the allure of Gen Clarke just a little too late. But when he was running all I saw was a one-trick pony, so there you are.


I sincerely don't see a difference in the policies Kerry and Bush have put forward, but I think that Kerry is less likely to get us into a war of choice, over what I think is a family feud. I don't think either of them have a clear and concise vision for dealing with social programs that are due to go bankrupt soon, but I don't think Kerry is as likely as Bush to sell off those programs to the highest bidder. There might be a lot of government waste in those programs, but the government is forced to work with open books whereas private companies routinely hide their numbers until it comes out in the frontpage headlines that Grannie's last bonds were snorted up the CEO's mistress's perfectly constructed nose. Call me a Socialist, but I've earned my distrust of behemoth corporations as have all Americans in the last three years.

I honestly worry. I really truly fret about Bush getting another four years. I've never felt so unsafe as I do now. My overactive imagination runs over the possiblities of terrorism or even more brazen attacks. I wonder what al Qaeda (remember them?) is planning while we're virtually ignoring them in the persuit of peace in Iraq.

we are so lucky to live in a democracy like this. seriously. In more ways than one. I don't just mean being born or ending up here. I mean, it was such an easy thing for our democracy to have never happened, or to have been sundered, perverted or swallowed up by enemies foreign and domestic. And that makes me realize just how fragile our persistence in a democratic state is. Iran was fairly progressive and nearly democratic until the mid-70s. Things went to hell, were flubbed and the country is run by a de facto theocracy. Syria has been in a state of emergency for what? 40 years. You would be forgiven for thinking they're a democracy, because it says so on their charter. But when a generation and a half doesn't know what national elections are, I'm kinda skeptical.

I dunno. I don't think we could descend so far so fast. But I'm suspicious of the current leaders and the current tone of the national debate. It all says "if you don't agree with me I will insinuate you dislike your home country. I will impugne your patriotism and that's assuming that I don't call you a traitor, the sentance for which, of course, is death."

I don't like either side of the arguement, but I'm especially offended by conservatives. I refuse to vote for Bush because to me he stands for their high-handedness and assumptions that those who don't follow their line are misguided, stupid or have clear motives to destroy the nation. I don't appreciate a national policy that is delivered in blustering tones. I despise the hubris that has brought us to the point today where the US is the most reviled country in the world and international hatred for us is the highest that it's ever been.

Pride goeth before the fall, as they say. So parden me if I'm looking for someone who's maybe a bit more humble.