Today was Election Day here in Pennsylvania (also known as Erection Day in Japan). I performed my civic duty such as it is.
No, I don’t want that person.
I dutifully picked my noes today.
After carefully studying the issues, watching untold commercials, praying, and flipping my lucky quarter, I selected my choices.
Granted, this was just a primary, and we’re not electing a new czar or anything important like that, but it is always a frustrating exercise in futility to elect anyone to any office.
There’s no one on this list I want to vote for. Actually, one of my good friends is running for school board so I voted FOR him. This may be the first time since I cast a vote for Ronald Reagan that I actually picked someone because I wanted to pick them; not because I didn’t want the other guy to win.
I am basically choosing the least of several evils. I am not picking who I want to be President as much as I am picking who I don’t want leading this country. I wasn’t even choosing–or not choosing as the case may be–a President today, but you get the idea. Today I was not choosing judges and county commissioners. Being that it was a primary, all the candidates were Republican on my ticket, so I didn’t even have the option of choosing against the democrat. I had to become more creative in how to discern one candidate from another.
I suppose things could be worse–I could live in a country where there is only one choice on the ballot, or no ballot at all. There was only one choice for Township Supervisor and I don’t like him. I left it blank. That’ll teach him a lesson!
The older I get, the more I am convinced of this truth: the people who are most capable of running this country and who would do the best job are all smart enough not to want the job.
I recently received an email about a wet monkey theory and its application to politics. Obviously, when I think of politics, the image of wet monkeys leaps to mind, but bear with me here.
Basically, you take five monkeys in a cage. There is a banana suspended from the ceiling and a step ladder that would enable a monkey to climb up and get the fruit. Every time a monkey climbs the ladder to get the banana, you hose down the other four monkeys with cold water. Apparently, monkeys do not like this, especially those that did drugs and sang in the sixties. After a few times, the monkeys learn what is going to happen, and if one of them tries to go up the ladder, the other four take it upon themselves to prevent said monkey from bringing about a good soaking on the rest. This more or less makes sense, but it remains to be seen whether this would stand up to clinical trials by the FDA.
Now you change this closed system by taking out one of the “trained” monkeys, and replacing him/her (I’m not going to check out the private parts but feel free to do so yourself if you please) with a new monkey. This monkey knows nothing about the cold water, sees the banana, and heads for the ladder wondering why the others haven’t already taken the food. The four “trained” monkeys proceed to beat the living crap out of this monkey every time he/she tries to go up the ladder. He/she eventually learns not to do that, even though he/she doesn’t know why. Maybe the FDA has ruled bananas to be bad for our health and he/she didn’t get the memo.
Now, you proceed to remove “trained” monkeys one at a time as above. The scenario repeats itself. Eventually, you end up with five monkeys who are willing to beat the living crap out of one of their own kind if he/she tries to go up that ladder. But NONE of these monkeys have any idea why. None of them were ever doused with water–only victims of being newcomers themselves and learning the system.
Hence it is with Congress. We voters think we are going to change things by sending a new monkey to Washington. He/she gets the living crap beat out of them for trying to change things, and the monkeys go about business as usual.
Maybe they should just hose us voters down each time we try to vote, and we could end the pretense that we can make a difference. Perhaps I am getting too cynical in my old(er) age. Maybe it’s just senility. There are three signs of senility: forgetfulness . . . and I forget the other two.
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