I'm NOT apathetic; I just don't give a hoot!

By Joseph Walther

It’s only early November, 2007. Elections are over a year away. It’s not so much that the politicking has already started; it’s that it’s been going on for close to 7-months, now! And, THIS is local politicking.

Nationally, it’s been going on, in earnest, for over a year. The Media—electronic, print, and blogosphere—have been inundating all of us to freaking DEATH with this stuff! Mediocrity at its finest.

A major problem for me is that most, at least 99.9%, of the local political windbaggery pertains to stuff outside of my home state. It involves mostly issues in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Yes! Local stuff that is meaningless to ME.

I can’t turn the TV on without seeing one or more political wannabes personally trashing their political wannabe opponents. And, seldom do such ads pertain to Delaware politicians.

The reason for it is the fact that Delaware is part of the Philadelphia metropolitan broadcast market, which includes Central/South New Jersey, all of Delaware, and Eastern Pennsylvania.

I live in a thriving republic called Delaware. It consists of 2,489 square miles—1,955 in land and 535 in water. Whenever I’m in other states and tell people that I live in Delaware, they want to know if it’s in Pennsylvania.

The point is that Delaware would amount to no more than a nice-sized county in upper Pennsylvania. Yet, we Delawareans, per-capita, have to listen to an endless stream of stupid, nonsensical, and worthless political TV ads that perpetually depict the sorry-assed state of political nonsense in other states.

It’s just not fair, I tell you. We have our OWN crop of sorry-assed political nonsense to deal with, along with our share of political morons who perpetuate the stuff.

Politicians are politicians. They transcend state boundaries. As in the rest of the fifty United States, most of them don’t care a hoot about the people they represent. They’re way too busy catering to “special interests.”

As well, we Delawareans can’t get enough voters to the polls at election time to “throw the bums out.” Perhaps if we did this a couple of times every fifteen or so years, they’d start paying more attention to us. But, don’t hold your breath. And, it’s getting worse, not better.

On the national level, the process has reached a point where there isn’t even the slightest attempt at political sincerity and seriousness. Note the primary debates. They’re no longer debates at all. They’ve come to be nothing more than multiple monologues with witnesses.

I look in on the debates, both sides, from time to time. I don’t do it to hear what the candidates have to say. They never say anything beyond their party’s line, while trying to fool all of us into thinking that THEY’LL be different.

I tune in just to watch the moderators. They ask positively stupid questions that have no bearing on reality. They spare no effort in trying to outdo each other in ineptness and foolishness.

They seldom attempt to hold a candidate’s feet to the fire with meaningful questions with follow-ups to confirm meaning. And, even when they do, they permit the candidates to spew out the same old stale party-line rhetoric, which, most of the time, has nothing to do with the original question.

The real entertainment value is in watching the moderators trying to project more intellect than they actually possess. While I’ve always respected Tim Russert of Meet the Press fame, even he has begun to sound like a moron.

At the last Democratic primary debate he asked the candidates if they’d “PLEDGE” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Every candidate replied that they’d do their best to prevent this from happening.

Unfortunately, this was not good enough for Russert, because they wouldn’t use the term “PLEDGE.” He seemed to have had his heart set on hearing the word “pledge.” He wasted a good 15-minutes trying to get someone to use it!

At one of the prior Republican primary debates, the moderator (Wolf Blitzer) asked the candidates, “Do you believe in evolution?” The answer choices were “YES” or “NO.” I certainly didn’t find the question offensive, but I think the required black and white response was stupidity personified.

We face real dangers in today’s world. Terrorism is serious business. Nuclear proliferation is serious business. Securing our borders is serious business. War, at all levels, is serious business. Finding ways to obtain affordable health care coverage is serious business. Solvent Social Security and Medicare systems are serious issues.

But, turning our lives and future over to a central government that has divided itself into hostile parties, both of which cannot agree on anything other than the notion that the other side sucks, is far more dangerous.

The Republican leadership spends way too much time hoping that we voters have NOT noticed how they have become the party of humongous government on a spending spree. Or, that a large degree of moral corruptness seems to have penetrated the party.

And, they most certainly want us to forget how they’ve managed, along with the Democrats, to screw up the execution of the Iraq war… beyond salvation, or that they seem to now be looking at repeating it in Iran.

The Democrats, on the other hand, lost their identity a few decades ago. Their leadership is still slinking around hoping that we have not noticed that they still have no idea what they stand for.

The voters don’t give a damn anymore. It isn’t because we’re clueless about things. We know, generally speaking, what we have to do to solve our problems.

Unfortunately, the media has gone above and beyond in its attempt to bring mediocrity to a new level. They not only permit political candidates to keep telling us things we already know, they encourage them to keep doing it.

The media will spend months over whether Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO, or whether Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith will permit him to govern without prejudice, or how many times Giuliani has been married, or whether a candidate thinks it’s OK for boys to kiss. It goes on and on and on… ridiculousness ad infinitum!

Unfortunately, critical issues remain unaddressed, not to mention the fact that specifics are not permitted into discussions. God forbid that they ever force candidates to spell out what has to be done, how to go about it, and how much it will cost.

I’ll “pledge” my support to the first candidate of either party who will look the American people straight in their eyes without giving us the impression that we’re a bunch of non-thinking morons, lay out what WE, ALL of us, have to do to get ourselves back on track, and challenge us to DO it.

We Americans can do the seemingly impossible when competent leadership challenges us to do so. We proved our mettle in two world wars. We were the world leader in science, medicine, and technological innovation for decades. But, I’m not so sure anymore.

As a nation, we’d better locate some substantive leadership and get back to minding the store… quickly. If we don’t, coping with the problems generated by global warming will be child’s play compared to getting used to the unpleasantness of losing our way of life.

See you next week. Hopefully George Bush and his band of merry men and women will not have started another war by then. I know well-meaning advisors have tried to dissuade him from this. Unfortunately, in their attempts to explain it to him, they keep forgetting to bring the sock puppets to the oval office.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.