A Very Brief Return to Politics

I stopped blogging about politics a while ago, although I'm not sure quite as to the reason. Perhaps it was because I stopped being a teenager and thus, the allure of getting into verbal fistfights proved to be less intellectually invigorating than it used to be. I'll admit it, I used to really look forward to getting in a scrap with some troglodyte about a political issue that really had nothing to do with me. And wouldn't you know, I used to think I could change people's minds with it, too. It just seemed logical to me, at that age, that there was some perfect argument hanging out there in the void of space that I could one day wield even a fragment of its potent rhetoric against my enemies and smite their tiny brains in righteous fury.

Actually, that still sounds pretty cool and if I ever do find out what that argument is, I do not think I will hesitate to make with the smiting.

I think the change really started after I heard some witty, applicable anecdote that compared arguing politics to trying to change a light-bulb with a shotgun. Or something.

The point is, I lost my taste for the sport, if, indeed, there ever was a moment that even tangentially resembled sport. That is not to say that I do not enjoy politics, however! To be honest, I consider the political game to be the most interesting one in town, the "game of thrones" if you will (a title of one of my favorite books by George R.R. Martin, incidentally).

So maybe it's not the sport that I lost a taste for, but how sullied and dirty the act has become. I'm not saying the old days were better, because I do very much believe in progress and subscribe to the belief that we're getting better as a species overall in many respects. And pundits have always been loud and stupid and abrasive, which is fine, because that's really what their jobs are: to say the loudest, stupidest, most abrasive thing they can imagine, because they get paid by being noticed, and nothing attracts attention faster than a loud idiot.

And I still vote, and every so often, I tune in to get a sense of the political scene. But every time, every single time I start to think, you know, maybe I should go back to having strong opinions and speaking my mind, I read something from one of the prominent political commentators:

Slavery built the south. I'm not saying we should bring it back, I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

And it's like, Jesus H. Christ, that's who people are listening to? There are people in this country who agree with that? Maybe I was wrong about there being a perfect argument to destroy my opponents through the power of its sheer eloquence. Maybe the answer is to be so stupid that there is literally no possible retort, no insult that could begin to convey all the ways in which the man who said such a thing as the above quote is a moron, and the people who like him are morons.

It's the classic Clown Impasse of comedy: how do you make fun of a clown? Tease him because he has a red nose and you can fit a lot of clowns in a tiny car?