The Thing about Elections

Voting is a faith-based activity; and for those atheists among us, not a very satisfying one. Every four years, a couple of people come onto the scene and promise us a bunch of things that any moderately intelligent human being with a basic comprehension of accounting can’t possibly believe in. And yet hundreds of thousands of people, not only believe, but actually follow these would be preachers around as if they were on the way to being delivered to the Promised Land.

When Obama speaks, he sounds like he is speaking Chinese by promising a bunch of very cool stuff I can’t even begin to understand due to the improbability of their accomplishment. He promises Utopia on a balanced budget; and not even Reagan balanced his budget while only promising three simple things: military expenditure, government efficiency, and yes, the elusive balanced budget[1]. Obama is promising to raise capital gains taxes “only” to the level they were during the Reagan administration, plus some other murky tax increases on personal income to pay for his promises. But that won’t even begin to pay for the deficit we have now, much less build Utopia. Hey, I am all for a Marshall Plan for this country, we need to rebuild before adding rooms to the house; but that will take a lot more than mamby pamby unsubstantiated promises about change. And yes, it will take a lot more taxation, and I doubt any American is ever in the mood for that. The trick for Obama will be how to go about taxing people without shutting down the already shut down economy. No way Barrack!

McCain... Hell, I don’t even know what McCain is promising anymore. He so much wants to be president before he dies that he has sold his soul to the devil, I mean, the right wing of the Republican Party. Remember John McCain, that dude the Republicans used to hate because of how often he would vote against their interests? Well, that dude has made such a salad trying to mesh his maverick streak while kowtowing to the base of the Republican Party that when he talks, he too sounds like he is speaking Chinese; and yo no hablo chines. Whatever he and Sarah Palin are selling me (something about what I can do to myself with a hockey stick), I’m not buying either.

So, the thing about elections is that they are very much like a colonoscopy. Two months of prepping for going to the dreaded booth to press a button next to a name or party whose toxic solution is less irritating on our stomachs that day, only to leave relieved that it’s over and we don’t have to do it again for another four years. ...Come to think of it, a colonoscopy has the advantage of having to be done only every ten years...

[1] In my lifetime there is one president that actually accomplished that feat: Bill Clinton. But he decided to squander his achievement by having Little Bill serviced in the White House in this most puritanical of countries...