A Political Struggle

I don’t often make polit­i­cal posts. I don’t often read polit­i­cal blogs apart from ones focused on local and state pol­i­tics. But I’ve real­ized that my entire online expe­ri­ence is sub­tly con­tex­tu­al­ized by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. It is impos­si­ble to go to my old online haunts and not find self-iden­ti­fied Democ­rats out­raged at what­ev­er is Bush’s fault today or self-iden­ti­fied Repub­li­cans act­ing all smarmy because they’ve got clout. Per­haps this is the way it has always been and my grow­ing polti­cal self-aware­ness is still too inex­pe­ri­enced to cre­ate cor­rect cor­re­la­tions. There is lit­tle to be proud of in any­thing I see from Democ­rats or Repub­li­cans, too much infight­ing, intractabil­i­ty, insults, unwill­ing­ness to lis­ten to oppos­ing views, peo­ple horn­ing in with their own agen­das, insults and insults. I can’t even get away from it with my own fam­i­ly. So when they ask if I’m a Demo­c­rat or Repub­li­can, I can’t real­ly answer them. They take their iden­ti­fi­ca­tions so seri­ous­ly that I’d hurt their feel­ings if I told them that I think both par­ties are utter­ly pathet­ic. I am thank­ful for the few polit­i­cal peo­ple I know who will engage in dis­cus­sion [not nec­es­sar­i­ly debate] over dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and help me get a decent grasp of what­ev­er issue we’re dis­cussing. I some­times wish every­one that is not them would shut up though.