Mosaic Life

Politics

You probably wonder why I only yap about random stuff on here. I don’t talk about difficult subjects like politics or religion. Well, the thing is, it seems like there are plenty of guy blogs that talk about that sort of stuff. You know, guys who are philosophy majors and are zealous about their interest in those sorts of things. They usually happen to be in their 20s. And you know what? Those sites bore me more than watching sports or waiting on someone to take their turn while playing Scrabble. Every once in a while I’ll see something on their blogs about their personal lives and I’ll read a bit, but they usually limit it so much that it’s hard to slog through a ton of boring theories or diatribes about what’s wrong with this politician or that court ruling just to get to something interesting, like the fact that they got engaged or had a car wreck. Now that’s something I want to hear about. Anyway, these guys usually know far more about those subjects than I do, and I don’t want to incite their wrath by talking about something that I haven’t written a 20 page paper on.

All that rambling to say that I do think about politics from time to time. Like, over the last year one of my most frequent thought was: “What is George Bush doing? He’s alienating everyone. People who voted for him are changing their minds, becoming sheepish about admitting that they ever supported him. Was Kerry that bad? Was he really? Or was I scared that if I voted for him, Christians would believe that I was okay with abortion?” Honestly, in the last two elections, I didn’t work hard to find out the facts or intelligently decide who my beliefs aligned with the most. So I didn’t vote. And I don’t feel guilty about that, because my vote would have been based on who others around me believed would be the better leader.

My friend and I were talking about the State of the Union Address last night, and he expressed overall cynicism about Bush’s goals. Of course, a lot of the stuff Bush said was to please people, to bring up his approval ratings. But I think most people have just given up on him, and placed their hope on future leaders to improve the US. A bumper sticker I saw a few months ago said something like, “America, hang on until 2008.”

Now you see why I avoid talk of politics.