Hokay Hokay Less Have Fun

This weekend, we hit the New England sports...well, "Sports Josie and Speed Give a Crap About," trifecta. The Patriots whomped the Dolphins (to the semi-dismay of roommate and erstwhile Dolphins fan Oldboy, who refers to the Pats' tradition of having weird troubles with the Dolphins as "my SuperBowl"), the Sharks whomped the intensely loathed P-Bruins 5-2, and the Red Sox whomped the SHIT out of the Cleveland Indians to go on to the World Series. Very exciting day for all, most of all for me because a.) thanks to the New England Surge's season, I now magically understand football, and b.) I like being in the DCU Center. (There is a deep and strange pathology attached to me enjoyment of the DCU Center, and it involves an amusing array of narcissistic manifestations, to wit: I can be reasonably confident that I'll be better dressed than at LEAST 75% of the attendees; I can be reasonably confident that I will be less socially retarded than about 95% of attendees; and mostly, I feel like I own that building after years of stomping the concourse for hockey, and in my mind, ownership=confidence=power=dynamicism=hotness=I win. /creepy psychological tangent.)

In any case, I hit a trifecta of my own today, this one of a political nature, with my American Government class, my own consideration of whether I feel I am qualified to ever run for office, and a post/comment on Celia's blog, and these elements have combined for some ranting. Someday I am confident that I will be able to be passionate about things without ranting and thus validating all of Madison/Publius' fears about passion in the electorate and faction and all that DANGEROUS SCARY BAD STUFF. Sorry, Madison. I continue to disappoint.

So okay, first we have the AmGov class, with the crazy professor whose madness I promised to relay to readers of this blog (read: four people I know about). I am a political science major, which no one really understands. For clarity's sake, here's the deal: political science is a section of social science. Poli Sci deals with theory, description, analysis and prediction of political tendencies, systems and broad-base politics. In English: I study what people and nations do in their political lives and argue about it with other weird academic sorts who decided trying to understand POLITICS of all crazy things was a good plan. It also means I read a lot of Locke and Hobbes, Rousseau, Plato, etc., all the big boys, and I occasionally get to read De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which I get inordinately psyched about...scary, really. I also sporatically take classes where we talk about the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and I get all riled up about this because basically I think the wrong side won. I'd describe myself as a semi-Federalist...I believe the government should do something to help the lower echelons of society because - okay, watch this, because this is the part of my personality where I have adopted a variety of phrases to succinctly say what I mean - any group is only as strong as its weakest link (schoolteachers everywhere, Nike posters), but that it should be a hand up, not a handout (Australia, Britain, Canada, and countless frustrated Americans). I would much rather see a small government that can actually govern rather than a slow one that never accomplishes anything. In any case, since I have been taking this class, I've been all pissy and such about the government (more than usual, that is), particularly the bits about how basically the Constitution reads "fuck off and die, peons."

Have you ever thought about how freaking hard it is to get your voice heard in this country? Congress moves so slowly and is so deathly boring that no one can listen to them for more than 5 minutes without passing out in their soup (except for freaks like me), the Presidency is a total crapshoot and does whatever the hell it feels like, we vote on Tuesdays and don't get the day off, so no one votes, the primary system is obnoxious, too far ahead of the actual election, and burns people out way too far ahead (Test this theory!: Are you ready to shoot yourself in your own personal face upon hearing the names "Rudy," "Obama," "Hillary" or "Mitt"? Okay, now...what's the date? Right. Either you're burned out or you're from Massachusetts and Mitt Romney's been giving you hives for years.). Who needs this shit? And then people make tons of money writing books with stern titles like "The Vanishing Voter." Dude, they planned it that way.

Gack. So, okay, second component, I have this great philosophy class, and I actually like it so much I'm going to tell you that my professor's name is Molly Flynn, she teaches at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, and she rules SO HARD it's tough to wrap your brain around. Worth the price of full price tutition, folks. She's just a brilliant, insightful, snarky (eeee!) woman, and she brings new life to some texts that let me tell you, I have had horrible, horrible acts of boredom done to me with in the past. The class ends at 3:20, and my next class isn't until 4, so I usually get in some good contemplative thinking while my brain is all cranked up to Mach 1 from Prof. Flynn's class. I often, because I am a narcissist (see above), think about myself, my place in the world, and my political aspirations (that just happens all the time...I could be talking about why Gordie Howe is the greatest player ever to strap on skates and then I'd be like "you know, Howe's crazy leadership juju reminds me of myself. I wonder how that will be parlayed into my political career." Embarassing, really.) and the Meaning of It All. Today I was thinking about whether I think I'd be a good political candidate and moreover a good office holder, which to me are entirely separate. (For Philo wonks and/or those who have had to read the Republic, we were doing Book VI, wherein Socrates is talking about how the Philosopher King should be the one to rule, so leadership and governance were sort of the order of the day.) I point out all the time to people that politics and government are not the same, and I think that line has gotten a little blurry.

I feel like in the end I would be a good office holder, and I know I am a good politician. I am far more concerned with the office holding, governing part of it, because I think that's where things usually get messed up. My main concern is that I love - love - power...political power, personal power, physical power, whatever, doesn't matter to me, I love it, love having it. What worries me is that so many people with a similar love do SUCH DUMB SHIT once they get ahold of a lot of it. I like to think that I'm too rational to screw up so dramatically as some of them have, but obviously these people have also thought that at some point...but maybe not. I don't know. One of the most frustrating things in this analysis for me is that I don't know what Nixon thought, before he said "if the President does it, it's legal." I don't know what Kennedy thought before the Bay of Pigs. I don't know what these men thought, and I don't know what current politicians think. I guess the bottom line is that I don't know how exceptional I am, if that makes sense...am I somehow one of the few that actually DOES have the reason and principle to stay honest, or am I just in a beginning stage from which all politicians start, destined to get all fucked up about the power they eventually gain?

Third component is Celia's blog...she wrote a post about, well, a bunch of stuff, including some disenchantenment with the current Presidental melee, and one of her friends posted a comment saying she never knew where to go for un-spun info about candidates. I posted an over-long reply about how you basically had to just research their past actions, which is an enormous pain in the ass and occasionally impossible (HOWARD DEAN, you rat bastard..."Rumsfeldian" incompetence INDEED. Don't be thinking I forgot to hate you, buster.), and...why? Americans, by and large, are not stupid people. Therefore, they HAVE to know, that a.) you cannot be for and against an issue at the same time, and b.) not everyone can fit every living American citizen's ideal picture of a candidate. So why do we demand that our candidates fit our ideals perfectly? What is that all about? Why do we pretend that there's no middle ground? Let's look at three of the most controversial (non-Iraq) issues...gay marriage, abortion and the death penalty. I know how I feel about gay marriage (everyone gets a civil union, but if you want to get married, that's your own stuff to get dealt with), but I can see how people have issues with it...however I don't think that those issues are generally LEGAL issues but rather moral and religious issues. Abortion I think needs to stay legal so that when it's necessary, as in the case of rape or incest, it will be available in a safe, sterile environment, but I personally think it's a horrifying concept, so I certainly see the grey area there. The death penalty I go back and forth on, because I'm not 100% convinced of its merits and I think the legal system metes it out unevenly, but then again, the Marine and I were just talking about the case of Osama bin Laden and to me, that's an example of where it's just clearly deserved and necessary. So we all see the grey area...without going into detail, because I have a hard time staying impartial, there is also a vast ocean of grey area on the Iraq war...when to pull out, how many people to pull out, what to do once we have pulled out, what to do if we stay there, military tactics...so why can't people just accept that not everyone has the answers? Why do we feel the need to lie in order to get into office, where it will all come out anyway? If this isn't evidence that the system is messed up big time, I don't know what is.