Are We There Yet?

I don't think that I've been this desperate for time to pass since I was a child. I can't wait for this election to be over, the winner to be inaugurated, and their first several months in office done. Just as long as it's over. I've had it up to here with both Presidential campaigns. The moronic sniping and countercharges, the bogus and manufactured outrage, the ever more blatant disregard for facts while pandering to the "greater truths" that partisan supporters hold up as reality (while pressing their fingers into their ears, and loudly singing off-key to avoid anything that might clash with that) - all of these things have left me completely disgusted with what passes for the Republic around here. It's gotten to the point where I find myself going out of my way to avoid political advertising (which is good, because it also allows me to dodge Washington State's rampantly annoying Governor's race).

It's becoming more and more difficult to resist the urge to simply not get involved. Spend the fourth of November playing Zoids Assault or shopping for new shoes or something. But, while I hate the conspiratorial tone this has, I do get the feeling that this is exactly what "they" want me to do. The primaries are done, and the campaign apparati* of Senators McCain and Obama are done looking for new votes. Now it's all about energizing/terrorizing core constituencies into turning out on election day, and introducing doubts about the other guy into those people who aren't blindly partisan one way or the other. And the purpose of those doubts, when it all comes down to it, is to keep people from voting. It's probably the single best method of voter suppression ever invented.

I don't want to reward the trend towards negativity by not voting, but I'm fed up enough with the major-party campaigns that I can't muster up any real enthusiasm or even desire to see either one of these fruitnobs elected President. On the Nth party front, there are a few candidates, but none that really capture the imagination.

But it's not yet October, so I have an entire month to see if I can find some sense of interest in the outcome of the election and revive it. I suspect that in the end, I'm going to wind up voting either for Senator Obama or Senator McCain - whomever my research shows has the least number of outright falsehoods to his name. I have a hunch as to who that will be, but we'll see if I'm right. I know this is an odd cause to be a single-issue voter around, but I guess I'm not buying that getting into the office is important enough for deception to be appropriate, but nothing that one does in office could be considered worth lying about. But then again, I know that politics is not a career that entirely honest people can ever really excel at.

* Yes, I know that apparati isn't the plural of "apparatus." But it should be.