I can’t sleep so I’m writing for a bit in the hopes I get sleepy again and can go back to bed. I slept kinda shitty most of the night, then woke up at 5 am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so here I am.
What do I want to talk about? I want to say I find all the news coverage on the US election fucking annoying. More like non-news because they keep making new articles that don’t give any new information. All they have been saying since election night is “it’s too close to call.” I know news sources are in the business of getting people to read or listen to their shit on a daily basis but fuck me, I can’t handle the redundancy. It’s like when I got sick of coronavirus news dominating all my news sources for weeks, months on end. It’s still in there too much but at least they are talking about other things now. For at least a month no one talked about anything else and it drove me nuts. Now the endless non-updates on the US election are driving me nuts. Jeez, 2020 has been annoying year in terms of news.
Another thing I find annoying about the US election is how it is illustrating the deeply divided, stupidly loyal lines that are drawn in politics. When people become dogmatic and fiercely loyal to a politician or political party, my alarm bells go off. No person and no party should be implicitly trusted, ever. We should always be critical of what these people and parties are doing because, well shit — would you keep taking your car to a mechanic even if they did a shitty job? If they lied or covered things up, if they missed big things, and you paid for work that was either done poorly or not done at all? Of course not, and I don’t think it should be any different with politics. And if anyone says “yeah but Trump/Biden/whoever always does a good job, always does the right thing,” then that person is clearly kidding themselves and not being as critical as they need to be of a world leader. World leaders are human and will make mistakes but to be put in such incredible positions of power, they need to be exceptionally talented people and held to higher standards. If there is so much as a hint of abuse of power and white collar crime on a person, they are an automatic fail for me. Maybe that sort of thing is not an automatic fail for you and ok, maybe you’re not as cynical as me, but I still think pledging total allegiance to obviously, deeply flawed individuals is a ridiculous idea.
I also hate the two-party system, and the first past the post voting system. I think it’s archaic, outdated. It’s dinosaur shit. It worked when we were dumber and got us to where we are now but now the world is largely a melting pot and we realize we have to get along with people who do not necessarily share our values, so why wouldn’t our governments reflect that? Why wouldn’t our governments be made up of all the different kinds of people that live in a society, so that they can represent all those different people? Why are most people content with “my team is in control for now so I’m happy, then we’ll do this again in four years and get pissed off if our team loses and threaten to take our ball and leave”?
Never mind that most parties are just slight variations on the ‘rich white men’ category.
I get so frustrated with these things that I just have to remind myself that if this is what most people want — if people want shitty crooks as leaders, if people are happy with swinging back and forth between the same two parties every few years, if people are happy with being pissed off for four years when their team loses, if people are content with huge swaths of society not being represented — then this is what we deserve, on the whole. I might want different but if I’m part of the minority and still want to take part in this society, then I have to accept the stupid bullshit that the clods who make up the majority want. And if I accept things as they are and go along with them, if I don’t completely remove myself from society and quit making use of all the nice things it affords me, I’m really part of the problem too. We all are. I think the only way to be innocent in all of this is to be a true lone wolf, living 100% independently of society.
It’s a neat idea but man, the kinds of people who do that are so fucking weird.
Actually, I guess a person could always move to a place that they feel represents them better. There are lots of different countries in the world with different political systems. Huh. I’ve never really thought about living in another country. I don’t think I would, I generally really like it here, but it’s food for thought.
Ok back to bed.
crimson highway 