There's something desperately wrong with all of you.
No, not you. You're fine. It's those other people. The ones interested in politics.
Now, don't get me wrong. I vote in every general election. As far as I can recall, I've never voted for anyone with any enthusiasm. There's something weird and strange about being enthusiastic about a politician. If you're not holding your nose when you're pulling the lever, I have no use for you.
The politician is just like the plumber to me. I call the plumber when the big porcelain bowl won't empty. You all seem to want to sit right in the bowl all day long, every day, and are amazed and angry to discover that others don't want to forego having a well-adjusted, autonomous life and climb right in there with you. Guess what that makes you in the hopper of life. All government is the least worst thing you can make it. If you like the government, don't just tolerate it -- you're daft.
Washing your hands is smart. Cuts down on the transmission of germs. You're much more likely to make it through the winter without a head full of green concrete if learn to wash your hands regularly. Politics is like that. Once every two or four years, wash your hands of them; you know, the bacteria we keep in the body politic.
But you're not just washing your political hands regularly. You've gone beyond chapped skin to exposing bone at this point. You think you're on the minor league version of The McLaughlin Group, 24/7, when well-adjusted people would be saying "Pass the peas." You think it's James bleepin' Carville across the table from you at all times instead of us normal people. You cover yourselves in clothing with garish nasty imprecations about decidely milquetoast public servants; your car is a rolling billboard for a worldview so cranky you should be ashamed to admit you hold it, never mind riding around trumpeting it. You yammer on endlessly about everything, disrupting even the most mundane public scenes with mindless opposition or enthusiams, and turn the political cycle into a flat line intead of a sine curve. You're screaming about the next election and two from decades past while they're counting the ballots for this one. You're deranged.
I read with amusement from time to time a news item that queries the average person about the names of the holders of various political offices. There is always a lot of consternation, masquerading as pity and disgust, about how ill-informed the average person is. The word sheeple gets tossed around. I have news for you lovers of the political: Normal people shouldn't have much interest in the government. East Germans needed to know all about the government. Free, autonomous people do not. To persons that view politics as a sort of all-encompassing bloodsport, you don't just know the names of various political personages. No, you always have a handy cut-and-paste trove of information archived about them, savaging them or defending them against savagery in any forum you can find that allows dyspeptic diatribes after the information bell is rung. I'd rather live in a country where 99% of the populace couldn't name the third guy from the left in a picture of the Supreme Court, than one filled with a sizable minority that keeps a folder on their virtual desktop filled with nasty tabloid-grade factoids about them.
When average people are required to pay close attention to the government, because the government is the source of all succor or pain in their lives, the country is doomed. No well-adjusted person should be-- or should be required to be-- interested in politics very much.
Come to think of it -- none are.
