Muse – Political Ramblings

It’s been an interesting month in American politics. We have the tail end of the Swift boat Vets and the rise of the CBS document scandal. It’s been an interesting exercise in how much people will run a topic into the ground, playing futile games of semantics on discussion boards until it gets to the point where you just don’t care to follow the convoluted spaghetti spiral of ins and outs.

Personally, I’ve left the issues behind already. Both are more or less irrelevant to the current campaign. I never gave either much credence, having learned my lesson when it comes to leaping upon any tidbit that ‘proves’ something shocking about Candidate A or Candidate B. More often than not I’m disappointed by a worthless distraction that ends up another of the micro topics that, after being beaten into a lumpy paste, will leap out like some ghastly jack-in-the-box in a topic of limited relevance every few days as some side point yet another post of nonsense.

I can’t wait for the debates. Now that both candidates have sucked in their courage and fully signed on, we can set Bush and Kerry side by side, shoo away their handlers after the days of coaching and preparation and watch with wide eyed interest to see if a few careful questions can shred to ribbons the carefully constructed shell of rhetoric like so much balsawood.

Can you tell I’m awaiting with bated breath?

I’ve grown tired of the normal sort of popularity contest campaign. Politicians talk often about reform and regulation, yet when it comes to setting up a real, effective, focused means of campaigning, it just isn’t there. What we need to do is truly level the playing field. I’d prefer if every candidate were given a specific amount of airtime on TV, a specific number and composition of staged events and were forced to take a basic questionnaire on the real topics and issues and fill it out, which is subsequently set up on the net for everyone to view without all of the BS you find on the personal sites of the candidates.

Then, with every candidate given this same specific set of aids, we would have a level playing field where everyone has their say with the same level of tone. It would open up the press to third parties in a way that they aren’t now. The details of the system, of course, would have to be mused longer than my few minutes of consideration to be made into a tight, efficient and fair system. Of course, my dream of a truly straightforward and properly regimented campaign will likely never come to pass because none of the sides(except perhaps third parties) want to upset the current open air to do as much(for the most part) as the money you bilk the people out of can fund.

I do think people need to keep more of their money. In part by not donating to any of these chuckleheads. Hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on the sort of tripe, crap and bullshit that gets transmitted over the airwaves and set up with stadium seating for the head nodding faithful to come and clap like a gaggle of morons.

Ok, that last part was a bit harsh. Probably only applies to 70 to 80% of the sorts that attend these functions. Perhaps closer to the top when it comes to Bush’s cloistered, “you must sign a loyalty oath to enter” events.

Of course, even if we reform the campaign, there’s still the means of election to deal with. Ignoring the Florida voting havoc and the worry over tampering of paperless voting machines, the Electoral College, in my opinion, flunks out. It’s a hold out from the time when states were so very hot on proportional representation, despite their population. Not only that, but it makes the campaign even more ludicrous when the places that get the most attention are the scant few states that aren’t reliable in their party voting.

The concept of swing states is so utterly laughable to me, it often makes me wonder why I should give a damn about the whole process. Almost anything seems better to me. One of my personal favorites being the concept of Instant Runoff Voting.

Even more so, we need to give independents inroads into the Senate and House. Many countries with parliamentary bodies have set ups that allow members of more than just two parties to filter into the representative mix with much more regularity than our own. It’s a first step toward making the third parties seem more relevant, thereby actually making them more relevant and, perhaps, growing them into valid alternatives that have a chance of actually being chosen. Rather than, as Nader is derisively seen by many, a spoiler one candidate’s chances because he pulls votes that would otherwise go to him and has, honestly, no chance of being elected. Ever. Mostly because of the way the system is currently set up, reinforced by the common sentiment of the country at large.

Sure, we have ‘choice’, though the true depths of choice are so very limited in reality. When you have a choice between A and B, when C, D and E exist and might be better choices, but are inaccessible, is that really a choice at all?

I don’t think so.

Where am I going with this? I suppose one destination could be that, all of the above mingle in mind often when I think about politics. Beyond the urgent, deadly threats of the moment, the overriding brokenness of the American electoral system, the candidates and all of the disgusting politics saps at my will to vote. Where is the desire to vote when, by my view, no matter how I vote nothing will really change? Honestly, do you think either Bush or Kerry will destroy America? If you do, you need to rethink. At this point, it’s highly unlikely either will run a completely disastrous presidency. The likelihood of terrorist attack in America is more or less the same for both as our intelligence community remains subpar for now, needing more than a single presidential term to fix. Our enhanced security at home is incomplete and our focus on truly defending the homeland is now muddied under the distraction of the ‘War on Terror’ which shifts justification to minimize the damage of whatever policy Bush decides he wants to take.

Neither candidate will immediately pull out of Iraq. To do so now would not be in the best interests of the US, regardless of if it was right to invade initially. And once it’s done, I doubt the US public will be ready for yet another war, so I doubt this grand war on terror will result in another, nor do I think it will last, even if Bush is reelected and slogs through another term. The chance of a second republican president sweeping in afterward to take up the flag and run with it after two terms of Bush, in my opinion, is highly unlikely. Just as it always has, the US will make waves, beat it’s chest, kill a lot of people, do some good things and some bad things, then fall back in upon it’s own problems.

History will repeat itself and four years form now we’ll have two more talking heads spouting the same partisan BS, wasting another four years and so on, no one looking more than perhaps a decade ahead, no one making any real progress for the human race as we sit on this drifting dirtball, fighting over resources that will eventually be depleted eventually and over ideals that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really mean all that much. Rather than focusing on improving our technology and extending our understanding and range out into the stars where they belong, we’ll remain mired here, movingform one ‘crisis’ to the next, ‘solving’ them only temporarily.

Yup, that’s how I see things. In the grand scheme of things, the petty bickering and chest thumping of the now is nothing. A speck in time that only proves the short sighted ignorance of most of our leaders and their pitiable shackles of rhetoric and dogma that keep their eyes to the ground rather than lifted to trace a true path forward.

Where is my inspiring leader who will finally stir something within me more than pity?