Those Were The Days

I haven’t posted a political post on here for several reasons. Moreso because I just believe that for the most part politics is like religion, and shouldn’t be aired too much publically. No matter what I write or think, a large number will vehemently disagree with me.

The other reason is that I feel – or I wonder, if my passion against one party is too strong to write objectively. So this is going to be me, trying to remain open minded.

Like MANY, I feel my upcoming vote isn’t to support one, but to squash another. That’s just sad. I’ve felt ambivalent in elections before. I didn’t care for either party in ’96 and I voted off the main ticket. I felt the same way in ’04. This year, I feel like there is no happy ending. One side is going to breathe a sigh of relief and the other is going to be miserable. I think that is simply sad for a nation that prides itself on the democratic way.

I don’t like the fact that both party’s candidates pigeonhole a person. If you support him you support a racist, xenophobic, misogynist. If you support her you support a lying, manipulating bitch who belongs in jail. It reminds me of the stupid little joke I learned in sixth grade; “Are you a <fill in the blank with the bad label of the day … I honestly think we used the word lesbian at the time. Forgive us it was the 70’s and we were children> trapped in a box?” No win answer. If you said that no, you weren’t, then you were a <fill in the blank. Godforbiditsalesbian> on the loose.

This election makes you a fill-in-blank in a box, or on the loose, no matter how you vote.

Yes, before you the few– go there, I understand that there are other choices, but the smaller parties are too weak to have been heard thru this shit storm of an election season. Plus really, not knowing what Aleppo was?

I was at my best friend’s house a few weeks ago and I asked her who she supported. When she answered my jaw sort of dropped and I asked why? I really wondered how and why. She told me she couldn’t stand the other candidate’s positions. I sort of knew the answer to this before I asked, but I went ahead and asked her what those positions were. She hemmed and then she hawed a little bit. Finally she admitted she really didn’t know, but she simply didn’t like the other candidate. I told her I had more respect for that stance, then I do on the puffed up speech-making that most people make, without a clue on what or why they are saying it.

How many of us really know outside of the headlines that scream at us daily what the sins truly are of each of these candidates? Something about email. Something about tax returns. He said something about grabbing pussy and she killed some people in Benghazi. Ok, so yes some of us are more aware than others on the real issues, but many like my best friend from childhood really wasn’t. She just knew who she liked and who she didn’t.

I get that it can be a popularity contest for some. It shouldn’t be this way. It should be a clear line in the sand where one person represents the values and aspects of one candidate over the other. I don’t feel that is happening. I feel like it’s this nightmare school yard fight that has gone horribly awry. Where one used to fight with their fists, now guns and knives are being brought. Where family was off-limits, we now taunt and ridicule the spouses and children.

Am I so old that I’m already saying, “Whhhy back in my day”, while I shake my cane in the air? When did we all get so fucking angry?

Here is the thing though – I sort of get it. All of it. Not necessarily get the candidates, but the fierce feeling that Americans have right now. I get the frustration and the anger and the hope and the despair. I get how much one candidate represents those feelings so deeply, that the opposition might as well be the devil himself. And that is where my objectivity can come into play. As scary as my candidate might seem to you, yours scares me just that much. Yours angers me. Yet I am defending someone even *I* don’t like.

These are both horrible representations that bring out so much fear. So much hate. Our answers don’t lie with them. These are not the droids you are looking for.

When my daughter was living with me, I tried to explain to her the pressures of political correctness, and how it was reaching a boiling point. Her generation is UBER PC. I mean I was raised pretty PC before PC was even PC, and even some of the issues that come up now I can only think “Come On! Aren’t we taking it a tad too far?”

I told her that you can’t expect to shove so much learning and correcting into a prior generation (mine and those before me) and not finally feel the snap. The break. I think it’s what is happening now. That your standard older white male is feeling the pressure of being just that – a white male. They have no organization to protect them; they are in sense the enemy to the political correctness movement. They are the white cop shooting a black man, and the white judging freeing a student rapist. They are the white banker who has taken your money. They are the white father who doesn’t want his daughter sharing a bathroom with a transgender. They represent so much gone wrong with the nation, and they feel it. You can only attack for so long before the bottom falls out and Archie Bunker in all his glory stands there.

“Boy the way Glen Miller played … Songs that made the hit parade… guys like us we had it made … those were the days” my daughter hated me singing that song, before she ever understood who Archie Bunker was.

Like many generations before us, I yearn for the good old days. Where life really did seem simpler.

I am frustrated with a hypocritical session of men and women who bow to the pressures of corporations, and lobbyists. I want them voted out.

I want our judicial system fixed. I want the good ol’ boys who sentence the crimes based on the criminals future, vs the victims fate – removed.

I want the corruption and greed and hypocrisy gone. Go home you career politicians who work a mere 139 days a year but easily make 3 times the salary of the average American worker and seemingly get nothing done.

I think everyone else does too. It’s that common ground most of us have. Unfortunately those very large, very looming gray areas that muck up the gears and create dissension and separation in America. That I don’t know how to fix.

I’ve lived my entire life in Southern California, where I think we do tend to be a little more liberal than a lot of America. It was a bit of a culture shock for me when I started to travel and meet American’s who looked like me, and sort of acted like me, but who did not think one ounce like me. Where homophobia and racism was a natural part of their lives and they wouldn’t think otherwise.

Where I had to argue that an 12 year old child who just wants to fucking pee for God’s sake, should be able to go to the bathroom where he or she identifies. It doesn’t mean your Johnny or Sally is going to be molested.

Where I had to explain that Islam and Terrorism are not the same. Where the Muslim faith teaches tolerance and peace, just as the Christian faith does.

Where I had to defend the difference between the government wanting to take away your guns versus the government wanting to regulate the sale of guns that no person outside of a soldier in combat even needs to begin with.

I could go on and on, but my point is made. Eventually my jaw clenches with frustration and indignation, and tension builds in my temples and chest. And I remind myself we are not a sum whole of all of our political positions. And I look at both of our candidates and wonder where I can flee to for the next four years, because like many I don’t think that either of these candidates are capable of delivering us out of the trenches.

I think in many ways they represent the exact thing we are trying to get away from.

Either way, I’ll be standing at the school tomorrow morning, waiting for my “I Voted” sticker, and hoping that the candidate of my choice, beats the other one, just this one time.