I have a political problem. Politics irritate me. But I'm absolutely incapable of ignoring the yahoos who are involved with politics.
I get irritated because every night, without fail, I watch the PBS News Hour hosted by Jim Lehrer. On the News Hour, very serious reporters interview people like Bill Frist, Harry Reid, and Bill Clinton.
If you don't know Reid and Frist, it's okay. They are pretty much the same person, except they belong to opposing political parties. This means that, under United States law, they HAVE to hate each other.
Why? Because in America there are only two political parties, which means one political party is always trying to wrestle power away from the other. It's like a massive game of King of the Hill where, if you win, you get a suitcase full of Nukes.
Once a political party gains the majority, the minority spends millions of dollars telling the world that (this is paraphrased) "those people suck and we aren't going to work with them, so there."
If the majority party has a huge majority then they can do whatever they want, which makes the minority party resort to tactics like impeachment or talking a heck of a lot. (The technical term is filibuster). But if the majority party only has a two percent majority then no one does anything for a couple of years except call each other names.
This whole process makes me numb. I'd like to ignore it. But I think it's kind of important to know what's going on in Washington. After all, they have the power to get us into wars. So I watch the News Hour to try and understand how my government works, but it's hard for me because of all the fighting.
I hate fighting. I want everyone to get along. This is why I could never run for political office. My campaign strategy would be to send everyone flowers. But my opponent would hire a private investigator to find out that I never paid my cancellation fee on a gym membership from six years ago. My opponent would call me a thief, would make me cry, and then would go on to win the election. Then, after my opponent won the race, they would take office and immediately start fighting with all the other politicians within a three state radius.
Yuck. I'm exhausted just thinking about being in government.
But I do vote. I vote for Presidents. I should vote for mayors and senators and judges and all the other positions that have power over my freedom. But, sheesh, that's a lot of negative TV commercials I'd have to pay attention to. I can only listen to so many ominous sounding voices telling me that Bo Shandy is going to steal my money and kick my boyfriend.
So I vote for Presidents. Usually, I don't like the person I'm voting for. If I got to have dinner with a presidential candidate, maybe I'd like the person more. But no one on a ballot has ever called me up and invited me out for Chinese. So I reserve my right to not like whatever President happens to be in power at any given moment.
And when I don't like a President, I get irritated again. But this doesn't stop me from watching the News Hour every night at six o'clock. Yes, that's dinnertime. Come Monday evening, you can imagine me sitting in front of my TV with a plate of pierogies while every interview I watch makes me more and more annoyed. Gosh darn politics!
