The Average Blogger

When It Rains, It Pours

So, after months of monotony and drudge, the past week brought some amusing anecdotes: 

1: It was my birthday, and I celebrated in style -- margaritas and Mexican food (lovingly tolerated by Not Your Average Blogger and the Young Prince, neither of whom share my deep and abiding love of cumin), plus some really spectacular presents:  the third season of Game of Thrones and a gorgeous aquamarine necklace from my parents, and a whole set of origami characters from Doctor Who (including all the doctors and a companion for each -- my favorite was K-9) from the YP. The best, though, was a new wedding-engagement ring set from NYAB, to accommodate the fact that this fat-fingered mama has gotten even more swollen as the years have passed and my old ones no longer fit. The new set is very shiny. I'm not including pictures because as pretty as the rings are, they are still around sausage-y fingers that look awful in close-up.

2: On top of all that excitement, I was told by my boss that I am being promoted.  This is very happy news, and I wonder if it will help at all with the weird, near-constant fear I harbor that I'm going to be fired any minute for missing deadlines or being too sloppy or otherwise coming up short. I suppose that is what makes me promote-able? It's funny how fear of failure can be so motivating. I wonder what embracing failure feels like -- is it like Edna Ferber said about being an old maid and drowning; a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle? 

3: I am exercising. Sort of. I'm "running" a couple times a week with NeighborGirl. It's really more walking with a little jogging thrown in, and we really ought to do it more than we do.  Today I struck out on my own and walked 2 miles with the dog -- NYAB dropped me off at the dog-wash place on the way to the YP's piano lesson, and when I was done I walked toward them til the kid was done and they drove to meet me.   When we got home I promptly passed out for two hours. That fresh air will kill you. 

4: I am writing. A little. Don't want to strain myself. But I'm making progress on the serious project, and now I've got a fun one on the radar that I'm having tons of fun pestering people about. I can only hope they  are as amused as I am.

5: Opening Day!  Well, the home opener, anyway.  Yesterday was the annual Bicknell holiday, and although the Nats lost on a ridiculously bad call, it was still a wonderful day. And we finished it off by seeing Captain America, so that was nice, too.

6: My only concern these days is the YP.  We measured him (we always do on Opening Day,)  and he's grown scarcely an inch since last year.  I don't know how to force-feed him and get him out and about more, but I guess that effort has to resume.  His brain, on the other hand, appears to be doing all right. Moving right along on school work, and we are starting to jab at him a little harder to demonstrate some intellectual curiosity beyond the bare minimum.  Perhaps I will threaten him with 37 pieces of flair. 

7: Or we will torture him with a road-trip vacation.  We leave Thursday night for a lonnnnng drive across this great nation and back. We'll be seeing the Grand Canyon, Vegas, Bryce, Zion, Death Valley, and the Petrified Forest, with a possible stop at the Dinosaur National Monument and another at the Stanley hotel (because the YP is disturbingly obsessed with The Shining and that would be our one sop to him. But if it's snowed in, no dice.)

So by the time I write here again, the YP will have seen all 50 states. At the tender age of 11.  Someday that might matter to him, but he seems sort of blase about it now. Ah, the joys of bringing up an Entitled Only Child. Sigh. I will say, though, that he's gotten a lot more interested in what he sees out the car window than he used to be. That's kind of nice. 

See y'all in a couple weeks or so.  

 

Back from the Beach

So, yeah, it's hard to blog when your weekly allotted blogging time is spent in a car or under a cabana. And I hafta tell you, given the choice? I'll take the car or cabana. What a great time. 

And another thing? Coming back from such a restful situation and falling into the Facebook fray of Trayvon Martin and the Texas Legislature and I don't know what all? Makes me think Facebook is a horrible place and I either need to drop about half the people on my friends list, or else people in general need to post less, read more, and try using their brain instead of insisting they already know everything about everything. I realize I'm not a big position person, and that I tend to reserve judgment and go oveboard on benefit of the doubt. I suppose there are rabble rousers who find this distasteful. The nice thing is, I find them equally abhorrent. Like this person, who was quite upset about the Martin ruling and  recommended seeing The Lone Ranger as a palliative because it is subversive: "SCOFF at the lead white man who believes in courthouse justice, believes The US goverenment would honor treaties, and that the US army is honorable and see how he is butt of his own joke.This scathing rebuke of white America in the guise of Disney fun is not going to last on the big screen."  Yeaaaaahhh, I'm sure it's Disney's deeply anti-establishment stance that explains the movie's failure.  Not the blasting that critics gave it for boring effects, bloated writing, and not-funny jokes. Whatever, y'all. 

So, let's see. The Tennessee week was pretty much as I described in advance. The house was spotless, the lads had fun on their trip, we were all glad to see each other upon return. 

That Saturday we packed everything up, got in the car at a horrible early hour, and headed south. Not Your Average Blogger drove. The Young Prince played videogames in the back seat. Me? I read Fifty Shades of Grey.  Oh, my god, what a wonderful, horrible, hilarious book.  It's like the Howard the Duck of softcore smut. I got it because I am figuring that a book I'm working on will have to have at least a couple sex scenes, and since I was in 9th grade the last time I read anything about heaving bodices, I figured I should see how it's done. I think what I got instead was how NOT to do it.  But I also got a laugh a page, which made the whole thing well worth it. NYAB suggested the title be changed to "Fifty Shades of Dying Gray Matter," which fits nicely. 

I also read the entire Wicked series by Gregory Maguire.  Much better writing, much higher language and structure and much more literary.  Not nearly as many gut laughs.  Having never seen the musical, I'm still trying to figure out how they took such a dark, political, angry book and made it into fluffy operatic fare. 

We stayed in Rodanthe, but spent a lot of time out and about.  We drove up to Duck one day to see the shmancy houses and get doughnuts. (I"m sorry to report we all found the doughnuts a little Meh.)We drove to Kill Devil Hills a couple times to go to the movies and see the Wright Brothers exhibit. (Unfortunately, that was the one day it rained like mad, so we missed a lot of it, and the kid wouldn't flop on his belly for my photo.)

We saw Despicable Me 2 and Monsters U. We saw three lighthouses (Cape Hattaras, Bodie's, and Curratuck, in that order,) and climbed them all.  

We also climbed a giant sand dune and pretended we were on Tatooine. (And yet, I am not any fitter.)

We also ate a lot, and spent a lot of time at the pool, on the beach, and on the cabin deck looking at the beach and  at the stars.

All in all, such a great trip we have already booked a place to go next year.

Then we were back home, and I went back to work and played catch-up, and NYAB stayed home and wrote and held down the fort.  The kid went to camp, but on the third day suffered an unfortunate altercation with a counselor. But we are all holding his breath that he learned his lesson, and he goes back Monday for another chance. Hoping he can last for the duration.  

Especially because the ease of retrieval will be less easy. On Monday, NYAB also starts a new job!  It's not my tale to tell, so I haven't said much if anything about it, but he took a buyout a while back, and has been home reading and writing and hausfrauing while hunting around for a new gig.  He'll be here.

 So I am hoping the next few weeks are fairly routine and humdrum. At the end of August, we are off to Illinois, where the kid will stay while NYAB and I jaunt off to Kansas City for our anniversary, then the kid and I are going to DragonCon in Atlanta, where we will stay with the inimitable Katherine, and then school starts. Fits and starts, I tell you.  

Blah, Blah, It's Been Said Better Elsewhere

But that doesn't stop me.

I may have mentioned before that I run a department at my place of employ.  One of the perquisites of this vaunted position is that when stuff happens on a weekend, I get to fill in as muscle and tissue on our otherwise skeleton crew. This basically means that from about 5 p.m. Saturday until 5 p.m. Sunday, I was immersed in the news out of Arizona, reading file after file about what it meant for various pieces of legislation, what it meant for Congress, what it meant for ... well, just about everyone except, you know, the people who actually suffered in the event.

 And the theme that kept coming back, over and over -- we should not be surprised that this wackjob opened fire in a grocery store parking lot. Why not? Well, because of the inflamed level of political rhetoric.

 Of course. How foolish of me not to realize.

 Because, see, to me that's about as silly as blaming his parents for bad genetics. Or blaming Giffords for not voting the way he thought she should. Or blaming that 9-year-old girl for being in a bad place at a bad time.

 Don't get me wrong, I do think political discourse has reached some ridiculous extremes. I think the anonymity of the Internet isn't always a good thing. Second only to religion, politics is a case where it is really sickening to read what people will post when they aren't worried about the consequences.

 And I suppose if there is a way to make some good come of this horrific event, this is as acceptable an avenue as any. I'm a big fan of anything that goads our generally savage natures into being a little more civilized and polite. I think we all -- and I do mean all: politicians, my colleagues in the media, and most of all the Great Unwashed Commenting Public -- would get a lot farther in getting things done if we could just say, "Hm. You know, from where I'm sitting that argument doesn't really hang together, and here is why, let's figure out how to fix it," than when we do things like, say, compare our opponents to Hitler, or throw bricks through their windows, or start talking about how such and such a policy is the worst thing since forever and we are all going to die.

 But that's sort of the point. Most people don't throw bricks. Most people don't buy a Glock and rip into a crowd of bystanders. In a face-to-face exchange, only those brimming with vitriol who have zero interest in results bother to bring up Hitler.

 My husband is fond of saying that we don't write highway laws based solely on the way Gary Busey rides a motorcycle. I'm pretty sure we should not rewrite our mores based solely on the way Jared Loughner might have interpreted something someone said some time.

 Everything I've read about Loughner pretty much tells me that he was every bit as likely to have looked at his bowl of Cheerios that morning and seen dozens of cross hair symbols floating in the milk. 

 Or, you know, maybe the neighbor's dog gave him a gentle nudge toward the Safeway.

 So if you are one of those people who thinks that this shooting never would have happened if Sarah Palin had just left those dang cross hairs off her campaign site, I'm sorry, you are simply part of the problem, looking for a way to advance your own agenda on the back of a terrible situation.

 If you are one of the people who thinks this is what Giffords gets for voting against Pelosi as minority leader, I find you genuinely disturbing.

But if you are someone who thinks this was a terrible thing and that perhaps the blame lies somewhere other than Mean Words, that perhaps we should be trying to figure out how this looly got himself a gun and that we should maybe be a little more cognizent of the general mental state of those around us, well, you're the person I want next to me on the bus.

If you are a rational human being, one of the Rest of Us, someone who thinks the Internet is awesome as long as you don't read any of the comments under the news stories, who always -- always, no matter what is going on -- wants to see this country trying harder to do better than it already is, who chooses to believe that most people in public office aren't in it as some kind of malicious plot to bring down the other side, who cares about your family and who aches when things like this happen, you are the person I want to know. You are the person I want to vote for.  

In the News

I'm amused that they redid the oath. I guess it's good to just put an end to the noise, but helloooo, 20th amendment. Anyone ever read it? Anyway, it's done, so everyone, please shut up.  Obama was the president regardless of how the oath on the big day went down, and they redid it just to make you yackers happy. Roberts didn't flub it on purpose, and the redo should also serve to make you other yackers happy. Move on.  (Especially you, Mr. Snarkypants Biden. You might take note that your boss is looking kind of torqued by this brand of behavior.)

Not sure what to make of this story ... some backgrounders say Mom was drunk off her ass and completely out of control, others say she was just stressed out from flying with two kids. Either way, unacceptable behavior, certainly. I think I can say I've looked at that cloud from both sides now -- drunk and childless vs. stone sober and harassed to the breaking point by a rowdy sprog and unhappy fellow passengers (and I've only got the one kid!) --  and I don't really see how either condition warrants one being labeled a terrorist. For what it's worth, I don't think the courts did either -- nowhere in the LAT story does it say what she was charged with, exactly. According to a Rocky Mountain News blog from 2007, she was charged with assaulting her children and interfering with a flight crew. That's not the same thing as being charged with having a bomb in your carry-on. 

And finally, the NY Senate developments have had me singing Track Six from here all morning long.  Unfortunately, I don't have any tunes about a guy named Cuomo....

Let Us Not Wallow in the Valley of Despair

Rather, the Blogger household celebrates and educates.

At dinner last night:
YP: I don't have to go to school tomorrow!
Me:That's right. Do you know why?
YP:  Nope. I just know I don't have to go.
NYAB: Oh, you do so understand why you have the day off. Whose birthday is January 15?
YP: Ummmm. Martin Luther King?
NYAB: Right. And we celebrate him when?
YP: The 19th, I guess.
NYAB: Close enough.
Me: Do you know why we celebrate him?
YP: Because he was one of the good guys?
Me: Nice try. What'd he do?
YP: Ummm. He had a dream.
Me: Yes. A dream of what?
YP: I don't know.

So we had a big long talk about civil rights and justice and segregation and discrimination and Rosa Parks and the whole ball of wax.

YP: I never had any dreams like that. I just have dreams about movies.
Me: Well, he didn't really mean like he went to sleep one night and this all came to him while he was sleeping. He meant a dream like he really wanted to see it happen one day.
YP: And it did!
Me: Yeah. But he didn't get to see it. And some would argue that's not true yet.
YP: Huh?
NYAB: Oh, let it go. It's all blablabla to him now. And he needs to get ready for bed.
YP: Can't I watch a movie first?

This morning, as I'm working and NYAB is sleeping:
YP: I don't have to go to school today!
Me: That's right. Do you remember why?
YP: Martin Luther King!
Me: And why do we celebrate him?
YP: Justice! Civil rights! Dreams! Freedom!
Me: Yes.
YP: ... Hey, do we have any movies about him?

Son of Abraham

So, Barack Obama is all Lincoln-palooza for this inauguration.  OK, great, whatever, I get the symbolism and the reference to racial equality and Illinois and yeah, it's great he is using the same Bible to be sworn in and there's a concert being held at the memorial and la la la paean and tribute to the gold-standard president cakes.

But ... jeez.  With even a passing awareness of history I have to ask: Is this really a road Obama wants to take?

Lincoln is a great historical figure. A hero. An unrepeatable ideal who managed to accomplish the impossible in countless ways, who overcame the insurmountable, who navigated treacherous ordeals with no road map.

He was also a man. And when you look at it closely, a man who made a success of the job in times infinitely more terrible than today. Who lived a good life despite incredible hardships and mindblowing misery.

Inviting comparisons the way Obama is strikes me as equal parts incredibly arrogant and stubbornly ignorant.

Arrogant, because Obama had a much more privileged childhood than Lincoln. His rise to pre-political success isn't nearly as remarkable. He received an education. As far as I can tell, he didn't spend a lot of his childhood in manual labor just to keep the family alive. And while he does confront certain challenges as he comes to power, they aren't a patch on what Lincoln faced. He steps into office with allies, a friendly Congress, a rejoicing nation all frothy about "change." That represents a whole deck of cards Lincoln wasn't holding.

Ignorant, in that Obama is inevitably asking people to consider him in the context of of a leader who presided over the nation splitting in two, a worse time for the nation than any before or since. A commander in chief who went through hell trying to get his army chugging into action.  A man whose child died in the White House and whose wife started out disliked and mistrusted and wound up completely batshit insane. A man who kept an envelope full of death threats he'd received while in office, and ultimately was assassinated while still holding the nation's reins.

Really?  That's what the incoming leader of the free world aspires to? That's the image he wants to conjure up?

Plus there are all these superficial lines drawn that don't really work if you think about them for more than a minute. Like this business with the train ride from Illinois to DC. Lincoln was a man of great practicality. He took the train because it was a reasonable action, the fastest mode of transportation around at the time. Taking a train today, while romantic and a nice photo op and all, doesn't necessarily mesh with Lincolnian ideals. Same with the buggy ride post-train. You think if Lincoln had been given the option of a stretch limo he would have turned it down for a historical horse and carriage? Maybe, but I'm thinking not, since the equivalent in his day would have been to turn down the buggy and hoof it.

Plus, if Obama is truly intent on retracing that trip, I think it only reasonable that he get off the train before Baltimore, don a disguise (some stories go so far as to say a woman's outergarment,) and be smuggled into DC in the dead of night. I mean, we are going for dead-on balls accurate, right?

I guess the thing that bothers me most about all this is the play-acting theme-wedding aspect it seems to have. We all know those people who have Renaissance Faire weddings and make the groomsmen wear tights and the bridesmaids carry tankards of beer around and guests are only allowed to eat turkey legs with no cutlery.  I don't mind a little play-acting. I like theme parties. I'll dress up for Halloween along with the best of the child-minded. But I rather think auspicious events should hold up on their own merit.

But perhaps I'm being a hypocrite. I mean, I got married at a baseball game. But I didn't make my guests wear uniforms or require that my matron of honor carry a ballglove instead of a bouquet.

I should be able to let this go, I know. I should be able to just think these things and not bother to write them down. I should let the man have his day and be happy that so many people are happy and that the nation's capital will see some outside-the-Beltway action next week and that maybe this event could spur even a brief return to civic education and awareness. But those mystic chords of memory just aren't doing it for me today, and I'm wondering if it's the world's memory or the better angel of my nature falling down on the job. 

A Pigeon From Hell

First, a public service announcement: The trick to drinking 64 oz of water a day? Well, that's 8 measuring cups. So drink 2 cups when you get out of bed, 1 cup before lunch, 2 cups when you get home from wherever you spend your day, 1 cup before dinner and 2 cups right before you get back into bed.  Voila. Now, on with the moodiness:

Seems like a lot of people I know are sort of glad the holidays are over. Ready to get back to normal. Ready to settle into familiar routines.

I'm sort of torn on this. I'd like to settle into a routine, but I'd prefer one that doesn't involve getting up early and going to work or, conversely, losing the house and starving to death.

Part of my reluctance stems from the fact that my sleep patterns reverted to my preferred hours of passing out around midnight and waking up around 10 a.m. This did not mesh well with my attempt to go to bed at 10 last night, as I was still wide awake and flopsy at midnight.  And then up at 3:30.

But more of my post-holiday letdown is because there isn't really a "return to normal" aspect in the Blogger household this year.  Yes, we all go back to our assigned daily desks, but ... Stuff at work has shifted in several ways -- small ways for me that will require minor adjustments (at least, at first,) and large ways for NYAB that will require major ones. And of course, when his life adjusts, so does mine.  I'm still waiting to see how it all shakes out. 

Not to mention Congress comes back tomorrow. No grace period for the wicked.

And there's an inauguration in 15 days. I'm probably the only person on earth looking at Jan. 20 on the calendar and going, "Yeah, I could sleep through that whole traffic nightmare and civic love-fest and the near certainty of bad planning executed poorly in the media and be juuuust fiiiine." Except, of course, it's MY JOB to be part of that bad planning and poor execution.  Thpt. And I am still trying to figure out if "federal holiday" means the Young Prince is off school that day or what.

And, good grief, the YP.  What is the second half of kindergarten going to rain down on him? Will he shape up and figure out what he needs to do to skate by the authorities? Or is he going to continue to require Unflagging Attention?  And just how does one teach an only child to be self-motivated? He clearly knows everything he is supposed to, and he executes with aplomb and only minor aggravation if I am towering over him with my boot on his neck saying, "DO IT," but when the boot is removed he flies all to pieces.  One friend suggested I pay him for services rendered autonomously.  Another suggested ignoring him and letting him do or not do things and face consequences at school. A third said something is bound to happen eventually that will make him care about it and I should really just lighten up it's only kindergarten for pete's sake sheesh.

Here's hoping against hope the holiday break tripped some behavioral trigger in him since clearly it didn't do much for me... but I am swearing less and more conscious about doing it. And drinking more water.

Wanna Be the First Lady of Infinity...

Well, I had a big quasi-political screed all set to go, but my cooler-headed censors have put it on standby, so instead you get a little religion news:

So... this guy. Why is it if you claim to be the Messiah you are labeled a nut and shipped off to the booby hatch, but people will line up around the village to get tapped on the head by some teenage jungle hippie? I suppose it has something to do with the fact that Buddhists do, after all, believe in reincarnation. But how do they know he is **THE** Buddha and not just, like, **A** Buddha? Or the New and Improved Buddha? Or ... well, you get my point.

Personally, I'm way more pumped up about this form of afterlife. Traces of a civilization from more than 4,000 years ago -- that's way more fascinating to me, and a heck of a lot more tangible. And hey, Zahi managed to keep his hands off the ladies in this footage, so there's a bonus.

No Rest for the Wicked

Aw.  I know the nicest people from the Internetz.  Thanks, you guys.  Am definitely off yesterday's ledge, thanks to the reassurance and advice.

Of course, I also have not slept since yesterday's post, so that might be contributing to the numbing effect. 

La la la, I love elections!  Yes, a new president is elected. And yes, for some of you -- nay, maybe even most of you -- the long national nightmare that was the campaign season and coverage is over. But I still have four more days of fallout as we analyze trends in Congress, how the committees will be reshaped, who's  going to get snubbed and who's going to get patted on the head, what the Freshest Form of Hope will offer up regarding pet issues and projects, blah. Blah. BLAH. And that's not even counting the congressional races that are too close to call or the recounts or the runoffs.  Here is what is left on my plate:

** Human shielding against maybe half of the 60 million nastygrams from colleagues about how everything we did sucked.
** Posting an 84-page Guide to the New Congress on our web site.
** Posting a 140-something-page weekly magazine on our web site.
** Wringing my hands helplessly as I watch other sleepless employees flip our site from our "Hey! Look! An Election!" template to a brand-new and probably at least a wee bit buggy "Hey! Look! A New Adminstration!" one.

Plus, you know, all the stuff I do the other 300-some days of the year to earn my check. 

Plus, oh yeah, threatening the Young Prince with physical violence if he goofs off in school.  No, wait, I might enjoy that too much this week. Let's try "threatening the Young Prince with being locked in his room with no TV and no music and no computer if he goofs off in school." Yes, I think that will keep me from being arrested.

Stuck in the Middle With Me

You know, I might as well just come out and say it. Extremists freak me out.  Freegans, fundies, right-wingers, left-wingers, pretty much all groups that take things that last step just make me ... wait for it ... extremely nervous.

I think this is why I have such a hard time in election years. People get all polarized and wiggy and you can't even say you prefer pepperoni to mushroom without someone jumping all over your pizza choice as some kind of indicator that you hate unborn babies or that you want to keep an arsenal in your basement.

People on the extremes are unreasonable and it's fruitless to engage them, and it just seems to be some kind of rite of passage that there are more of them at election time.

I used to take these people on and challenge them. I used to ask them questions. I used to fisk their arguments. I used to bloviate.

It doesn't work. If you can't see things from another's perspective, there is very little chance that much they say will sound at all rational. If you go around assuming that all anti-abortion people are just hateful small-minded morons who don't understand teen hormones, then you are never going to understand the person for whom abortion is quite literally a matter of life and death and an extremely slippery slope. If you go around assuming that everyone who opposes abortion is a fundie nutjob, you are never going to understand the person who says, "Hey, I'm OK with the idea it should be legal, but why don't we try Actually Passing a Law about it?" And if you go around assuming that all those people who are OK with abortions are just selfish godless horrorshow monsters who don't deserve to have a reproductive system in the first place and who have no respect for others, you are never going to understand the person who says, "well, with a fair amount of reflection on the matter, I could probably come up with cases where having an abortion might actually be the smartest course of action for Everyone Involved, including the fetus, and not just the action of some selfish bitch who didn't want to get fat for a few months."

I do know I am never happier to work where I do than during an election year, so that in social situations when people start jumping on bandwagons, I have the perfect excuse to recuse myself and go sit in a corner and play with the under-10 set or the family dog or hey, just pick at my fingernails. 

I guess what this says about me is you could probably place me right smack at the top of the bell curve: I know people who are horrified by my right-wing fascistness crazytalk and I know people who look at me as a bleeding heart squish. I do think it's funny that no matter where I am, I tend to find myself holding a minority viewpoint on at least one, if not several, issues.

For me, my righty-lefty tendencies don't run the table. They tend to veer wildly from issue to issue. My mom used to like to say that she was so far left that she'd completed the circle and wound up on the right. Maybe that's what I am? I don't know.

I think there are more of me out there than I realize. The issues just never come up unless people are fired up and nuts about it, and at that point rational discourse is pretty much out the window.  Even asking, "Where did you hear that bit of information?" is considered throwing down a gauntlet, never mind any sort of follow up regarding "Well, are you sure it's correct?"

Setting all that aside, however, I do cling to the aspect I love  most about all this, which is that history shows it's pretty freaking hard to screw up our political process to the point where it is irretrievable.  We fought a civil war and things worked out, for pete's sake. Call it enlightened self-interest, call it stewardship of the future, people have a knack for keeping a good thing going.

NYAB likes to cite that Bismarck quote that compares governing to sausage-making -- the end result has value, but you don't really want to know very much about the process unless you have a strong stomach because it will gross you right the hell out.

And yet, every four years, every dork on the street and his brother suddenly fancy themselves sausage experts. More than that, they are encouraged by folks in the media to view themselves as such, especially if you are reading THAT media's material.  And with the Internet, it is amplified, with more information (and misinformation) available, with more outlets for people to vent their spleen both anonymously and ostentatiously, with more people out there willing to log on and buy in.  People who haven't paid a lick of attention to economics, foreign policy, social policy or any other matters of state are suddenly qualified to make statements about the qualifications of people they hadn't even heard of before last week.  They are allowed to bash Sarah Palin's lack of experience when in point of fact, Abraham Lincoln was the least experienced legislator ever to serve as president.  They are qualified to say Barack Obama's being a Muslim is a deterrent to voting for him. 

The good news is, no matter who yells loudest, who spews the angriest vitriol, indeed, no matter who wins, this country has a history of surviving stupid voters and bad leaders.

A friend wrote me recently that he hoped this election would "at least restore a degree of trust in our government and the belief that in spite of its screwups, excesses, and oft-times incompetence, our government is the best in the world and, like  a puppy, always means well." 

I find this interesting. For me, that belief was never lacking, and I don't need this election to restore it. This nation's history, its fabric, its basic tenets -- I have to believe those will endure, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum.  Whether you think the government should be responsible for handing out  40 acres and a health plan to every resident, be they a citizen or otherwise. Whether you think that people who live in small Midwestern towns should spend their own flippin' money to build homeless shelters instead of hitting up the Feds for tax dollars from Florida.  If you don't believe in your government, if you don't know your history, if you really can't wrap your head around why we are a shining city on a hill -- what is the point? If you feel disenfranchised and disappointed, why not go out and figure out a way to become ... what would that word be? Enfranchised? ... and find a way to make things better? Why only bitch about it every four years, and then complain bitterly when the tide goes against you -- or worse, you get your choice and find out it isn't exactly what you thought you were buying into?

Good government begins at home. Self-police. Observe the golden rule. Every day. And take note of how incredibly hard it is to do. If you do not conduct yourself well, how on earth do you expect to be taken seriously when expressing outrage at the government's behavior? If I write a public post raging about my kid's bus driver and lousy customer service, can I really expect to be taken seriously if I say McCain is too much of a hothead to be in charge of things? If you make a series of choices that land you in a position where you can't pay your rent, you should be ashamed of yourself, not howling that it is the landlord's fault for not taking Visa. And you certainly don't have any right to be whining about the federal deficit. 

By all means, get out and vote.  Just remember that Election Day is one day of a very long historical process, and behave accordingly. And maybe take a stab at paying more attention through the entire next political cycle, not just the mad rush from August to November 2012.