Ever feel like you've got too much going on in your head? Last night I watched the Giants and Tiny Tim Lincecum throw darting fastballs and wicked and nasty sliders to the Braves hitters sending them flailing into the ground. Lincecum looks like a cartoon character out there with his long hair and wild moves on the mound. With the orange towels waving in the stands and the ineptitude of the Atlanta hitters, looking more like Wiley Coyotes trying to catch the Roadrunner than Braves trying to hit a pitch, I wasn't sure if I was watching the Cartoon Network or TBS. I was half waiting for Lincecum to pull a Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and just peel off his disguise revealing a animated version of himself in the 9th inning. Oh...now I get it. I thought I heard he was dating Jessica Rabbit.
Hypocrisy annoys me. Hence all politicians and politics in general. I grew up a staunch conservative and even listened to my Dad's daily dosage of Rush Limbaugh growing up. I grew up in a middle class household and while my parent's were never the bold in your face type of Republicans we definitely held firm in our beliefs and some of them are still etched inside of me to this day. My frustrations with public services being at an all-time high now I can't imagine the train wreck we are about to encounter with this nation wide health care plan. Long story short though, eight years of life in Seattle as a social outcast for my belief system and I have found more middle ground. I see both sides of issues. I am neither right nor left. I would never define myself to a party so blindly and sitting in the middle now allows me to see how absolutely ridiculous both parties and the entire process is. It is agonizing to listen to each side pick apart the other without discussions on issues. The two party system is a joke. We used to have real choices early in our democracy and somehow we are now stuck with two. The problem is if a third party candidate actually stuns the country and wins they will get nothing done in a Congress and Senate full of the other two. It would just be an antagonizing stale mate until one of the two parties regroups and "redefines" their message and we vote one of them in again.
I am annoyed at how blindly some follow their ideologies. As if they have been brainwashed into believing that Republicans are bad and Democrats are good or vice versa. It's really juvenile. Did we grow up or are we still living in a playground in 3rd grade? Yes there are bad apples in both parties and bad policies but both parties are so alike I don't even understand where all the vitriol comes from. It seems to come from special interest groups that fan the flames with advertisements or stories that support their beliefs and distort the beliefs of their opponent. This has been going on since our political system began but we just see it more with the Internet and 1000 channels of television. In the old days there would just be newspapers spreading their propaganda in support of their candidates. Now if I search for a story online I get sent a thousand links to different pages of propaganda. What is real and what isn't is really irrelevant, it's online. Journalistic integrity and libel aren't even really factors online because they aren't held to those standards. So who know what is real, imagined, or just someone's personal views anymore. When the newspaper became something we burned in our fireplaces instead of what we waited for each morning with our cup of coffee then we lost credibility. Now anyone can, and does, create their own news. As isolated as we are now with online, we've become even more isolated because we can just surf our own beliefs 24 hours a day, never seeing the other side, never deepening our argument. We just rehash the same tired propaganda and talking points.
The art of character assassination should be a class taught in college. It seems that is the number one way to win an argument now. Don't like their policy, dig up dirt and destroy them. Show the world that their word mean nothing because of their alleged actions. Both parties are 100% culpable. We can say who started it and who does it more, that's all irrelevant too. It's simply trying to frame the argument to justify their actions. It's not debating anything of value by saying one guy did it first. No one wins when we do this.
Relationships now are becoming about spin control. With Facebook we are so interconnected between each other's friends that break ups are right out in the open. Essentially Facebook has created a new cycle of break up grief: 1) Frustrated posts of problems...2) Changing of relationship status...3) Deleting couple pics from photos...4) Posting of sadness or happiness (depends on the breaker upper and the dumped party...5) Condolences from friends...6) Positive quote postings..and finally 7) Starting your own blog!
Sports, politics, relationships, no religion today. I guess that is unless you count Facebook as a religion, so then I've covered all the bases. Thanks for playing.
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