Q Is For.......Quit It

Someone recently told me I was making a situation worse by trying to help. Even though this is patently untrue, my response was to apologize. It doesn't matter who it was or what it was concerning because it wasn't the least bit unusual, I do this all the time in work, home, friendships, everywhere. My New Year's resolution is to Quit It.

My knee jerk reaction in lots of situations is to say "I'm sorry." And what's bad is not that I don't mean it, but that I do. I actually accept blame for things I haven't done, that aren't at all my fault or aren't even bad in the first place. Everyone screws up and I do as well, but not nearly as much as I tend to think. I just have a hard time accepting that. I lay too much guilt on myself, accept too much responsibility. I try to fix things, it's in my nature and not something I'll ever stop. I need to realize that that's a good thing, whether it's welcome at the time or not, and that just because everything doesn't immediately turn to unicorns and rainbows it doesn't mean I'm a failure.

It's largely my own fault. It isn't often someone makes me feel bad about something I've said or done or not said or done. I tend mostly to do it to myself for some reason. A friend actually praised me last year for being the "son, husband, brother, father and friend" that I am. I am going to enter this year taking that to heart and consciously reminding myself that I really am exceptionally good at all those things. I'm done apologizing for being kind, for trying to help and for doing my job.

This all sounds very Stuart Smalley as I read over it, but whatever. I needed to say it. I know I'll make mistakes and when I do I will make amends.  But as far as apologizing (or holding it in and feeling bad) when I haven't done anything wrong or especially when I've done good, this year I'm going to Quit It.

P Is For....Political Correctness

I know, it's low hanging fruit, everyone says they hate the PC Police and the stupidity of political correctness has been pointed out ad naseum. I want to try to take a bit of a different tack and talk about the horrible effects it's had on our sense of humor and why that is important.

I take the whole Sandra Fluke thing as my example. Here we have a 30-something woman talking about bankrupting herself trying to afford birth control. In a sane world, as soon as the country heard this, it would start looking forward to the Saturday Night Live skit the next weekend. In past years, she'd have been a long running burlesque or vaudeville show joke. Whether or not you agree with her contention that it is not only Constitutional but morally imperative for the federal government to force Party A to pay for the birth control of Party B, you should be able to see the humor potential in the way she went about making her case. Sex has been a basic building block of humor for 1000's of years, and there are important anthropological reasons for that. Those reasons themselves would take a long time to explain, and like most of anthropology they are about as un-PC as you can get, so I'll leave them alone for now.  Suffice to say laughter is one of the things that makes us human and if you can't laugh at your own politics, you aren't very secure in them.

That's what I think is the unseen damage of the tendency to shun ever saying or doing anything to make others feel uncomfortable. It leads people to be intellectually lazy, to hold onto their own ideas without ever considering what they look like to people informed by a different experience. Understanding that what you think or believe may actually be funny to someone else, and accepting that without getting into a tizzy of offense, doesn't mean you don't really believe what you believe. It actually means that you have thought through your own positions enough that you are secure in them and can step back and laugh. We are losing that in this culture. We are becoming a bunch of thin-skinned, humorless drones, and that's no laughing matter.

O Is For.......Open Minded

I've been waiting for "O" to come around for quite a while. Finally, my chance to rant!!! My son asked me a while ago if there were any words I hated so much that I would delete them from our language. I think "open minded" is actually two words, more of a phrase, but I hate it with a rare and burning passion. I don't dislike the concept, the definition of "open minded," one bit. What I really hate is the way it gets used by the people who bandy it about, particularly those who use it to describe themselves.

Open mindedness should mean an openness to new ideas, to opinions different from your own, a knowledge that wisdom begins with knowing how little one actually knows. There are some people who actually are open minded, by that definition, and I'm lucky to have a few as very close friends. This isn't about you. The world could use more people who genuinely seek knowledge. These people almost never use the term, though, and I don't think I've ever heard one of these friends of mine use it to describe him/herself.

The people who do use it don't mean that at all. What they mean by open minded is people who agree with them. Vary from their chosen point of view (which tends toward the "progressive" more often than not and not rarely includes one or more bizarre theories about such things as vaccinations or fluoride in the water or the Illuminati) ) and you better look out. The very worst thing you can do socially is to publicly disagree with people who say they are open minded. If you do, they will assume you are ignorant, bigoted, overly ideological or just plain stupid. See, these folks consider themselves to be open minded. Therefore, the opinions they hold are the result of their open minded consideration of all the facts and therefore are the only valid opinions one could possibly hold. They refuse to accept that they may not have all the facts, or may have tidbits of information that aren't really factual. Their minds are not open to that idea. So, if you disagree, you are, by their logic, either not privy to all the facts (ignorant), purposefully ignoring the facts that led them to their conclusion (bigoted or ideological) or mentally unable to process the facts you do have in an intelligent manner (stupid.) Their minds are completely closed to the possibility that anyone could possibly look at the same facts and come to a fair, intelligent opinion that differs from theirs. It is senseless to argue with these people, it's best to just agree with them. Don't worry, it'll never occur to them you are being condescending. They will gladly take your agreement as proof they are right and have chosen well the people they hang with.

On the other hand, there are those who are so open minded that their brains fell out. Open minded doesn't mean believing everything you hear. It means considering it. Some things, after consideration, are pure bullshit.  Some things are wrong. Some things are hurtful or mean or evil. Being open minded shouldn't be an excuse to be intellectually lazy. That makes me think of another term, one that just happens to start with a "P"......

N Is For.....News

I'm a news junky. It's not just what you'd normally consider "news" either. I'm very curious -- about things, places, events, people. If I care about something, be it a national news story, an academic question, a political debate or even just whether or not a friend had a fun Christmas, I won't stop asking until I get answers. I'm persistent.....or stubborn....or annoying, I suppose it depends on your perspective. I love having LOTS of sources of news, but I don't go in for the usual ones. I don't regularly watch any national newscasts on TV, I don't have a subscription to Wilmington's local daily, I don't get Time or any other news weekly. I listen to NPR every bit as much as I listen to Rush Limbaugh. I read quite few political and news blogs pretty regularly, both right wing and left. I have 735 "liked" pages on Facebook. I love Facebook as a news source, not because everything is accurate, because it most certainly is not (especially the re-posted and linked things from friends and relatives), but because it opens up the door to a huge variety of sources. As long as I know where my news is coming from, it's useful to me. The trick is to take it all in, consider all the sources, and noodle out the truth best you can from that. It isn't perfect and it takes patience and some intelligence, but it's the way of things now.

The mass media, as we were taught it functioned when we were children, is dead.

It took reading a friend's blog about the news and Facebook posts during the day of the Sandy Hook shootings to bring that fact home. Jen wrote about all the falsehoods reported and then spread all around Facebook during the day of the shootings. They weren't malicious falsehoods, not purposeful untruths, but they were certainly hurtful to some of the people involved. They were simply the result of trying to be FIRST rather than ACCURATE. That's what our media has become. It's driven by us and our need to have all the news immediately, but just the same, that's where they are. Reporters print or broadcast anything they hear as soon as they hear it. Then  it gets picked up and spread around social media until the next "first news" comes along to contradict it. What gets me is that this hasn't made many of the consumers of news as wary as they should be. Jen is an exception. Most people, even some very smart and savvy ones, eat up and spit out anything coming from the news media. This is foolish.

When I started college, way back in the pre-internet dark ages of 1989, the New York Times was the Gold Standard of American journalism. By the time I graduated, in 1993, it was becoming a joke. By the turn of the new millennium, the Old Grey Lady was meaningless. She'd been exposed knowingly printing falsehoods, not even to be first, but simply because she was lazy and politically motivated. All of the national mainstream media followed suit. The local press is a bit better, it is closer to its consumers and a bit more accountable, but still it is falling victim to the same degradation. Our local daily, the Star News, ran a whole big front of the feature section story about a friend of mine's neighbor's successful career as a professional wave runner rider. It was a great story, with pictures and exciting anecdotes, except for one thing. It was entirely fabricated by the neighbor. One or two phone calls would have exposed that, but the reporter didn't use one source outside of the supposed wave riding champ. That would have gotten you thrown out of my journalism school, but it is perfectly fine in today's journalistic world. Now, we see local politicians calling news outlets with stories and having them aired or printed as Gospel truth, often without one attribution. We see the web sites of news organizations play host to totally unmoderated "mesage boards" or comments sections that become grand stands for lunatics.


It's a new world, for better or for worse. There's nothing I can do about it, and that is driving ME insane. The local news outlets are bumbling along, faithfully printing and airing anything they hear without the first attempt to verify it. The national news outlets have all become partisan, making the self-proclaimed partisan radio shows and news casts and magazines and blogs into the most trustworthy. I'm hopeful  my son's generation will deal with this better than my own. I know he is not one to believe everything he reads or sees or hears. I don't know if it's just him, though, the kid has always been a skeptic and an independent thinker. It is the one thing I am most proud of in him. If he is representative of the future, we'll be ok. I pray he is.

M Is For....... Merry Christmas

Yep, that's it. Just have a really cool yule and enjoy all your blessings. Love all and let yourself be loved in return.

That is all :)

L is for....Letting it out

I've been trying to write things on my other, happier blog and just can't. I figure maybe letting it out here will help. It's "safe" here as I have only one follower and I doubt she ever looks, it's so rarely I post and then very intermittently. These shootings in Newtown are so raw, so primal-sad, so completely un-understandable, I can't imagine anything I say failing to piss someone off somewhere as I try to work out my own thoughts. But if I am going to go on, I need to let it out. So here it goes, rambling though it be.

I'm thinking about what it means to share others' grief, or frustration, or anger, or any negative emotion. Sharing happiness is a given, it's universally accepted and expected. No one feels violated or invaded personally when another, even a stranger, shares their joy. We WANT it to spread around. But the negative emotions are different, on both sides. Sometimes we who grieve or enter a dark time in our lives want to hold that to ourselves. I don't know why. Part of it is surely the instinct to not hurt our friends, to not let our pain take away their happy. But pain is also more personal then joy, more private. To feel it is to admit some weakness, some vulnerability, and we are often loathe to do that, even to our closest friends and family. Just as the wisest one is the one who knows how much he fails to understand, the strongest ones are those who can admit they are weak. The stoic is, in my opinion, too weak to face the reality of his human emotions, or at least too weak to allow others to see. Pain and grief are sometimes strangely important to us. Even though they are negative, they are OURS and in dark times we need to feel a connection to our deeper self. Maybe pain gives us that, and it's strongest when we are quietest about it. But what to do when others are in pain? I try to find some common ground, some basis of understanding, but in doing so I fear others see me as minimizing their personal feelings by making them less than unique. I'm a bad example, I think. I'm about as clumsy as a person can get, in word and deed and timing and everything else. If a wrong thing can be said at a wrong time to a wrong person, I'm there saying it. If there's one subject a friend is sensitive about, I'm there cracking jokes to them about it. I chase all my friends away that way, some forever, the best only for a while, but still. I'm torn between silence that could be taken as uncaring or a failure to recognize a need and saying too much of the wrong thing. I can't find the happy middle. It sucks.

So, if it's so hard to understand what to do when our friends hurt, what do we do when it's strangers? When something like Newtown happens, the whole country, the whole world feels it. What must that do to the actual families that lost kids? To be almost forced to share the most intimate thing that has or will ever happen to you with millions of strangers must be surreal to say the least. Does it help or hurt? I don't know. Should we send them things -- cards, emails, facebook posts -- or does that just remind them for months and months of what happened. We feel great personal sadness and worry even though our own children are in no more or less danger than they were a month ago. We borrow their pain, or a part of it, to express the fear that lives in every parent's heart every day, all day. Is that a good thing? Or is it selfish? Is that making us all one community of parents? Or is that capitalizing on the very real and concrete misery of strangers? We feel, as parents, for any kids, but how far does that, how far should that go? We hug our children more and tighter, we treasure every second more fully, and that's a good thing. We take this as a chance to think about the unthinkable, to remember friends and family who lost children, and that's a good thing, too.

It's almost easier to dwell on the horrible possibilities when it's strangers bringing it up. When it's a close friend or family, we can tend to hide from the grief, to just not know what to do. I know I did when my sister lost her son right before Christmas about 8 years ago. See, I can't even tell you what year Angel died. I feel terrible about that. I was far away and didn't go home. I'll pay for that til I die, inside myself. No one has made me feel bad, it was a miscarriage so the social norms are very fuzzy, but I won't ever forgive myself. Maybe that's why I always err on overdoing the trying to care when  I think a friend is in need. Trying to not repeat past mistakes, to be stronger than I was. It doesn't work. But what else to do?

That's the lingering question from Newtown as well, what else to do? What do we take away? What do we learn? Do we crack down on guns? Do we militarize our schools? Do we re-open the mental hospitals and fill them with children like Adam? Do we leave them at home and trust them or a parent to drug them into submission every day for the rest of their lives? Can we prevent Adams from occurring by parenting differently?  By testing during pregnancy? Is that moral? What rights does Adam have? Is a sane mind required to take hold of rights our Declaration says emphatically are bestowed by God? Were we witnessing Evil at work? Were we witnessing mental illness at work? Are those really two different things? What is evil? What is mental illness if there is no cure? I've watched with fascination as the dividing line has been drawn on facebook between those who seek solace in faith and those who seek solace in science. The faith crowd cries "evil" and the science crowd derides them. The science crowd seeks comfort in logical, medical answers, and the faith crowd derides them. I can't find a home in either camp, surprise surprise. I believe in Evil. I refused to tell my son there were no such things as monsters because I believe it to be a lie. I put my faith in logic and reason as well, and believe science will hold the answer to all mysteries sooner or later. I think the two "sides" are inevitably going to come closer as we grow wiser. This debate is an example. A mental illness that allows a child to gun down children may be a chemical imbalance. Or it may not. It may not be something we can "fix." I think the way forward is for the faith crowd to support an endless effort to find the medical or psychiatric "fix" and for the science crowd to accept that there may not be one. There are constants in the universe, like the speed of light. Perhaps evil is one of them.

Or not. I don't know, and I'm ok with that. I'm trying to move forward doing the best i can. I cry when i feel like crying, and I laugh when I feel like laughing. I will listen to all of the debate about "what do we do" and I'll think and feel and reflect before I decide, if I ever do. I'll treasure my son and all the children in my life. I'll stumble and bumble along trying to watch out for my friends as they navigate rough times. Sometimes I'll be right, often I'll be wrong. But all I can do is try, and try I will.

K Is For.....Kinetics

Sir Isaac Newton taught us that bodies at rest tend to stay at rest and bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, at constant direction and speed, unless acted upon by an outside force. That dynamic, was on full display during this past election. The one thing we can say for sure this election was most surely NOT about is change. Not only was the incumbent president returned to office, but congress retained its make-up almost exactly. We have a Democrat in the White House, a Senate just barely in Democrat control and a House securely in the hands of Republicans, exactly as we did for the last two years. This was a continuation of the status quo, but was it a vote in favor or is something else happening?

The other stand out fact about this election is that it was pretty much the Great "Meh" Election of 2012. As ubiquitous as the Facebook posts and phone calls and media reporting was, that didn't translate into voter participation. The tallies aren't complete, but it's safe to say conservatively that we had 10 million fewer voters than four years ago. We are likely to find we had fewer voters than in 2004. That's not just a smaller percentage of people voting, that's raw voter numbers. The population has grown by 19 million in the last eight years and yet we had barely as many people vote, if as many at all. We had a huge jump in the percentage of the electorate that chose to sit the election out, but why?

One possibility is that people are happy and satisfied with the state of the nation and their own lives. But if they were all that happy, I'd think they would want to turn out to ensure the continuation of the status quo by voting in all the incumbents, and they didn't. Even those who won did so with fewer votes. Many people who voted for Obama in 2008 chose to not do so this year, for example, so I'm not thinking that's the reason.

Another possibility is laziness and apathy. A friend of mine was bemoaning the number of young people in her circle that didn't even register because "they just aren't into politics." I don't think that feeling is at all limited to 20-somethings. It's a sad thing, as I commiserated with my friend, but this is actually what I hope to be the reason for the lack of participation in this year's election. I hope laziness is the problem, that a lot of bodies at rest are simply not being acted upon by sufficient outside forces to start moving, because that makes the solution simple, if not easy. Those of us who do care, wherever we lie on the political spectrum, can get those balls rolling by exerting some force on them in the form of discussion and argument and example. Like I said, not easy, but simple. I have an idea that I think will work and it conveniently starts with the letter "L." Guess what the next blog post is.....

The third possibility I see is the scary one. I am hoping the lack of participation is not due to a conscious or unconscious rejection of the efficacy of representative government itself. If people are not happy and not lazy but don't believe they hold the power to effect change at the ballot box, they will seek other means eventually. I am trying to hold faith that we haven't gotten close to that point yet, and I'm going to do all I personally can to see we never do.

J Is For..........Joe Biden

I love this guy. I just can't help it, I truly find him totally endearing. I wouldn't ever want him to ascend to the presidency, but I wish there were a way to keep him Vice President For Life. He's hilarious both when he is trying to be and when he's not. That alone sets him apart - he has a sense of humor about himself and everyone around him. He is famous for his "gaffes," which I think are just Joe being Joe. The man has no filter, what comes into his head ends up coming out his mouth, and happily for us his mouth is often in front of a microphone.

Joe is not a bumbling idiot, though. I don't think he's terribly bright, but I do think he is a very gifted politician. He has been in politics his entire adult life, holding elected office despite all the fabulous gaffes. I can think of no other person, living or dead, who could get himself chosen as running mate by a man he said was successful only because he was an "articulate and clean black man." In our day and age, that is about as racist a statement as you can make and not be publicly drawn and quartered. But Joe just smiles and moves on and everyone laughs it off. Same as his remark about every gas station being owned by an Indian person. Or his homage to what wonderful things a bunch of college cheerleaders could do "on hard wood." Sure, a lot of his lee way comes from simply being a liberal democrat, but that's not all of it. He has a certain something that makes it hard to dislike him, no matter what he says.

I think with Joe we get what and who he is. He can talk to a roomful of donors, who each paid more than the cost of my last two cars combined to attend, about how evil and terrible and dangerous to the nation rich people are. And he can do it without the slightest tinge of irony because he really believes what he is saying and because he isn't bright enough to get the irony. He survives as a politician because he doesn't ever "play the politician", he just IS one, through and through. I'm not saying he's honest, he isn't and his well documented plagiarisms prove it to all who care to know, but he is REAL. I think there's a difference.

Tonight Joe will face Paul Ryan in a debate. I can't wait to watch, just to see what Joe says. I think he'll wipe the floor with Ryan. Ryan has a much better grasp on reality and is much more intelligent than Joe. But this won't be like the last presidential debate. On that night we saw what happens when a very accomplished and practiced professional business executive debates a mediocre politician. It had little to do with the "issues" or politics, I believe. I think a left leaning businessman like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates would have given the same drubbing to a so-so right leaning career politician, like say John McCain  for instance. Tonight will be very different in that it will feature a true political debate between two politicians, and Joe Biden will make Paul Ryan look as amateur as Romney made Obama look a week ago.

Extra, Cheating Bonus "I" Post

I is also for Irony

I am growing more and more annoyed at all the political posts on Facebook. My annoyance may be turning to amusement, though after seeing something on my friend's newsfeed that defines irony. It wasn't a post I disagree with at all, in fact I am wholeheartedly 100% behind the poster in his sentiment.

This man was angry that a politician, I don't know who or what office he holds and it doesn't matter, was offering up a "prayer" for the death of our president. Ok, this is terrible and it needs to stop. First off, the Presidency itself deserves respect no matter who holds the office. Second, the president, no matter if he is Barack Obama or George W. Bush (who suffered many more vocal death threats than out current president, by the way, including an entire off-Broadway show), is a human being with children and a family and hopes and dreams and faults and everything else we all struggle through life with. So, yes, he was right, wishing death on a politician, or anyone else for that matter, is bad, very bad.

The irony? This person was using a Guy Fawkes mask for his profile picture.

Good grief. 

I is for.....Independent

I know, in North Carolina there are no "Independents." They are called "unaffiliated" here. It amounts to the same thing and "U is for....." is a long ways off and I wanted to get this off my chest. Actually, now that I think about it, "unaffiliated" does a pretty good job of explaining my desire to leave the Republican Party. From the closest local level to the highest national level, there are policies and individuals that I just simply have no desire to be affiliated with any longer. I've not "turned to the dark side" as my mother asked, though. The locals who run the Democratic Party are just as obnoxious, and much more corrupt, than the local Republicans and the national Democrat platform is largely in complete opposition to the "just leave us alone" politics I support. So, a few weeks ago, I resigned my seat on the Brunswick County Republican Party Executive Committee and went to the county board of elections office and changed my party to "unaffiliated."

It wasn't easy and it wasn't particularly fun and afterwards I felt the strangest combination of relief and guilt. I joined the local apparatus of the Republicans to help keep John Kerry out of the White House. I wanted to do all I could to keep a man who called my father a baby killer from becoming president. My thoughts on that haven't changed. In fact, I was sickened by Kerry being given a speaking role at the DNC Convention last week and appalled by the applause he received from folks who probably consider themselves "supporters of the troops." I took over as a precinct chairman after a friend who held that position was unable to continue while she fought, and eventually was overcome by, cancer. Promises to dying friends aren't something one breaks easily, and I pray she is looking down and understanding that I just couldn't carry on in that role anymore, but I still think I failed her memory.

I feel I let her down for two reasons. First, I was unable to find a replacement whom I could trust to push the party in the right direction. Second, I left the party headed in a direction I am not at all pleased with. I don't regret a minute I spent on that board. Though it seems now to have been for naught, at least I tried. The vast majority of people love to criticize and whine and moan about politics, but never try to lift a finger to change anything beyond voting once every year or so, if that. I am proud that I tried and sometimes succeeded in making things better. I helped elect some good people, and helped prepare some of those good people to run. I saw the local party move beyond a local yokel old boys and girls club into a huge and relatively diverse group. The party holds the power in this county now, for better or worse. The Democrats that ran the place for decades are disgraced and sometimes on parole. My fear is that the new crop of elected Republican officials learned nothing from them and is sliding down the same slippery slope. Power does indeed corrupt, and I have seen it happen.

The county exec committee itself is changing as well. This election has brought out a level of anger and meanness that I've not experienced before. I entered the party, admittedly, as a "negative campaigner." I was against John Kerry much more than I was for George Bush. But while I have no respect for Kerry and think he is totally unfit to serve our country as an elected representative, I don't hate the man. I don't think he would have destroyed the country. I don't think those who supported him are evil or stupid. This election is different. There was getting to be a feeling of almost desperation in the atmosphere at those exec committee meetings that made me very sad. I watched as the most angry voices in the room drowned out the more optimistic ones. I liked the Republican party because it was the positive one, the one that said we were all capable of greatness if allowed to pursue our dreams, the one that believed nothing and no one could kill the spirit that made America the greatest place on Earth. I saw that slipping away to be replaced by fear and anger. I tried to slow it down or stop it, I really did, but I failed. I just don't know what else I could have done. I hate failing, but there you are.

So where does that leave me? Here is where the feeling of relief comes in. It leaves me independent. I have a friend running as a Republican for our county commission and I think he'll be different so he has my vote and whatever help I can lend him. I haven't become cynical, at least not completely so. I will wholeheartedly support my Republican state house member and state senator. Both men have cast votes I disagree with, but both vote their conscious and are not afraid to argue their point of view in an intelligent and respectful way to anyone who asks. Both are good men and I wish everyone could be so lucky to be so represented. The Democrats are running a complete nobody for governor to replace a Democrat that even the Democrats will admit is in waaaayyyyyy over her head, so I'll happily vote for the GOP there as well. Our US House delegate is technically a member of the Democrat party, but votes as a Republican and his opponent is a sleazebag, so there's a lever pulled for the Dems. I've never voted straight party ticket in my life, so none of that is unusual.

The big one causes me more trouble. The presidential election has everyone in a tizzy and I feel like an outcast because I just don't care. The seats I referenced above will affect the lives of me and my family billions of times more powerfully than the president. It's ironic that the one seat everyone fights over the most matters the least in our day-to-day lives. Our country has thrived and struggled under far left wing Democrats and far right wing Republicans. We boomed under Reagan and under Clinton. We busted under Carter and under Bush. We were led into war more often by the left than by the right, and the last two liberal ex-flower children of the sixties to occupy the commander in chief's seat have used our military power in wholly unconstitutional ways to kill innocent people. That won't stop no matter who wins, it's that power corrupting thing again. Our economy is stalled, not dead, and it will rebound in time no matter what the outcome of this election. Both candidates will keep in place a failed tax code and both will continue to spend money we don't have on programs our founders forbade the federal government to create. Social Security will continue to be a paltry help to those who truly need it funded by those in my generation with no hope of ever reaping it's benefits in their own retirement. Healthcare will move closer to becoming the responsibility of the federal government. The "Affordable Care Act" was pushed through congress by the Democrat nominee, but is based almost entirely on a program created by his Republican opponent. Both nominees will continue the Patriot Act, it gives the government too much power for either to willingly give it up. Religion will continue to be used as a political football with the left attempting to banish it from public life and the right attempting to force it into every meeting and school and gathering, both of which are expressly and clearly forbidden by the First Amendment (not that anyone reads the constitution anymore). Both parties will force government into the most private of personal areas. Whether the question is who can be married or what light bulb you buy, the federal government has no legal right to weigh in and neither candidate respects that. One side wants to make contraception harder to come by and another wants the government to pay for it. Both sides are completely and totally dead wrong, and for the same reason; both options give the Leviathan a dangerous amount of control over women and families' reproductive choices.

I guess that's my big problem with both parties.They share a disturbing tendency to want to control my behavior. The right tends to offer proscriptions against things they dislike, which is easy to see and disagree with at least. The left does the same thing, but adds a more subtle approach. They offer to let you do whatever you like in many cases, and even offer to make others pay for it.But that's another form of control, making you dependent on them. The man in the windowless van does not have your best interests at heart just because he's holding out a pile of candy.

I feel like I'm in a train station with people very anxious to go this way or that, and very angry at those traveling in a direction different from their own. There's a lot of yelling and moving and boarding, but no tracks lead where I want to go. Some are closer than others, and those trains look enticing, but I know the farther I ride them, the more they will diverge from my own destination. Is it worth riding a train going even a bit the wrong way because it is easy and offers ready companionship? Is the "affiliation" with people of similar but different goals a good compromise?  I used to think so. I used to think that going somewhere was better than going nowhere. I thought the options were pick a train or stay in the station, vote for the one you disagree with least or sit out and give up your right to chose. I'm beginning to change my mind, though. I don't think I will continue to accept the premise of the two-party system. I think I'm leaving the station all together and setting out the way I chose on foot, alone if need be. There's no tracks, not even a road, but there's a path laid down by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson and others, even non-politicians like Walt Disney (he didn't accept any premises either). It may be overgrown and it may take me a lot of effort to find it and the going will be much slower than the trains steaming off to November 6, 2012. My answer won't be found there. My guy won't win that day because I have no guy. But I think that maybe if I keep at it, maybe I can find a way beyond the lesser of two evils. I owe it to my son to try, it's his future I'm looking for.