I can’t say that I’m angry. I’m just, you know, disappointed. To be quite honest, I’m disappointed because my team is losing. That doesn’t necessarily mean bad things for the country (although if it does mean another impeachment trial then I’m pulling a Gauguin.) It just means that my people are not the people getting elected. Having grown up cheering for Vanderbilt football teams, I should be used to this. The sting doesn’t fade.
But the sting is not so harsh this year. In part, perhaps, because I have neither participated nor paid an overly large amount of attention. For reasons maybe we will explore in future posts, I’ve been let down by the current administration and congressional majority. Obviously I’m not alone. As a point of clarification, I think it is important to say that my issues have to do more with strategy than with goals. But we’ll get to that later.
Sooner, we should give thanks and praise that this election cycle is at least finished. With the hungry pride of journalists waiting for fresh meat from or about candidates like Alvin Greene and Christine O’Donnell, our political rhetoric has reduced CNN to the political version of a 24 hour TMZ broadcast. $3.5 billion we have spent on this crap without having any sort of real discussion about how we can provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Or, for that matter, find out who Cokie Roberts is wearing tonight.
an encouraging factor, though, is that a growing number of us are diligently seeking real, solid dialog about real, solid issues that pertain to our real, solid lives, and if we all keep diligently seeking this together, we’ll become a market that even the CNNs and the FOXs can’t ignore.
I hope this is true, but I wonder how it is possible with $4 billion being poured into an election cycle and Keith Oberman and Glenn Beck virtually locking up an audience with which to sell ad time. It’s also possible that a period when there was a reasonable political discourse is a figment of my imagination.