I've spent the last two months completely immersed in the ins-and-outs of our US presidential candidates’ debates. I'm like a lot of people these days: I want to know what’s going on and I’m tired of being lied to. I want to know who really voted for what, what their track records are, who’s lying, and who is stretching the truth. I get a little thrill out of picking apart the words of all and sundry. More than anything, I think I love the drama. I love looking up facts and figures that haven’t been quoted in the media recently and toss them at people. I like knowing that when someone fact-checks me, they’ll find out I’m right. (Not to mention, while they’re researching what I said, they have less time to research a rebuttal.) I love to argue. And I love to think I’m right.
But today, I realized that I’m the only one having fun.
This morning I told my ultra-conservative neighbor (who I really, really like, and who is one of the kindest people I know) that I thought McCain was not only untrustworthy, but corrupt, deluded, and a chip off the old Bush. I also went on to bash Bush for a while. Then I said that Sarah Palin hated America, and hated women. (This actually elicited a gasp, and I’m kind of ashamed. I don’t think Palin hates America, just most Americans: those who don’t see eye-to-eye with her.) I intimated that between them both they’d not only take advantage of our country’s crisis, they’d destroy us. On California’s Proposition 8 (Prop 8, titled “Eliminates Right of Same–Sex Couples to Marry”), I responded to her assertion that families are the cornerstone of America with my own belief: Americans are the cornerstone of America. I said that I certainly supported civil rights for everyone simply because I was an American, implying that anyone who disagreed with me wasn’t. She’s such a nice woman, she doesn’t even dislike me for my rudely stated opinions. (I wish more people were like that. I wish I was one of them.)
Earlier this evening I called my mother and asked if she was still voting for McCain, in light of the debate and all. “Of course not.” I kept my cool, and gleefully egged her on as she yelled at me for being obtuse and overly-critical of everyone. When she turned the phone over to my father because she became too infuriated with me to speak, I listened to him condescendingly tell me that reading “left-wing bullshit” doesn’t make what I believe fact. Explaining that I not only fact-check what so-and-so said personally, but that I read measures, propositions, and the bills in question, only made him more high-handed: I couldn’t possibly understand the implications and history of every bill that came under my nose, nor was I qualified to call them “facts” because of that lack of understanding. I patronized my father until he turned the phone back over to my mother in disgust. My mom sighed and told me she loved me anyway.
So, not only am I the only one having fun, I’m belatedly realizing I’m not a nice person to be around right now. Worse, I’m an annoying (persistent), overbearing (intelligent) brow-beater (passionate voter). And only I think that I’m anything that’s been parenthesized.
Here’s my plan: I won’t stay away from reading or thinking about political issues. After all, this is my vice I’m talking about. What I’ll do is this: I won’t chatter about politics. Like religion, it’ll be one of those things that you “just don’t talk about”. No more Alternet. No more news feeds in Google Reader. No PBS, NPR, or CNN. No more tracking down the “real story” of who said or did what. From now on, I’m solely going to read the texts of proposed laws and bills—in their entirety. No more skimming to make my point. If I have thoughts I want to think through or bounce off of someone, I will use a notepad.
We’re all beyond the point where argument will change our minds. I am done pretending otherwise. And I’m done making my mother pull her hair out. Sorry, Mom, you raised a Liberal virago, but she knows when to shut it down—even if it is a little late in the day, and even if she can’t resist tossing in gleaming golden nuggets of wisdom as she does so.
