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{election year 2008: i'm embarrassed} jack wilder So, your guy won. Congratulations. Your guy lost. So sorry. Whichever way your election went, one thing remains certain and lingering for me, post election: I am left with the sensation that it is as though we were all fighting for our sides in the Super Bowl. And now, it's all done. The date has come and gone. The war has been fought and won. And so, the loud, lazy shouts have all dissipated to back into the recesses of our small brains. And all the red faced people that were so teary-eyed on election night, are no longer talking about politics and who should win and (watered-down) why. But really? Is it done? (Isn't everything supposed to just be beginning?) What this election year made explicit to me was the fact that we are far from center. And probably, beyond repair. If there was anything that won clear and cut, black and white, through this election year – was the fact that: We are incredibly stupid. If our senses of consumerism, modes of living, watered-down ideologies and general disposition do not articulate this notion, then every four years, and the grand hoorah, does. Our election process is a grand metaphor for so much. It’s a hundred years too late to begin talking about these things, but what can I say – I was born late. My levels of cognition bloomed late. I’m a product of a diminutive society that no longer fights for the notions it valorizes. Talks about. Makes commercials for. Number one: Every U.S. Citizen should be required to take an examination to qualify them for voting. I have heard so many ideas, cliché and hackneyed alike, that have usurped any redeemable quality in my fellow humankind. I don’t know where this began but: WE DO NOT LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY. WE LIVE IN A CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMITED REPUBLIC. A Democracy is mob rule. A Democracy is what keeps black people at the back of the bus. I ask you, dear reader: what is the difference between liberal and conservative? What is the difference between Democratic and Republican? Is liberal the same as Democratic and is conservative the same as Republican? If our politics prove anything, it proves that we live uneducated lives. That, while we have every educational tool at our fingertips, we are still uneducated. Probably stupid. Probably not ignorant – because we can know. But don’t know. Reason is slave to the passions. I believe this is more than a useful idea about how we should go about living our lives, I believe it is axiomatic. I believe that this is an unchangeable facet of our human condition. Psychologically, biologically, this has been illustrated: that data coming-in from the senses is first filtered by our emotional centers of the brain before it is captured and interpreted by our rational centers of the brain. I was watching CNN on Election Day and heard a person exclaim: Just vote with your heart. Huh, come again? I was appalled. If you are going to vote, I believe that this is the one time where you should, by all means necessary, abolish your emotional side. Kill it. Bury it. And then, come and vote with your brain. Again: We should all be required to take an exam before we are allowed to vote. Not only should we need to know the difference between a democracy and republic, as well as the difference between Republican and Democrat – we also should have to know the difference between conservatism and liberalism. And lastly, we should certainly have to know when and where emotion is appropriate and where rationalism should be employed, strictly. Holy Christ. I’m surrounded by idiots, my fellow Americans. |
