I Need a Purple State

With another presidential campaigning season looming on the horizon like a noxious black cloud, I wince in anticipation of the hundreds of politically-charged emails that will soon inundate my inbox. Friends on both coasts, and of both political polarities, will soon begin the deluge of divisive, inflammatory, often hateful and usually inaccurate diatribes, designed to incite the masses into taking action - to either purge the nation of the current governing body, or to purge the nation of those who would overthrow the current governing body. To me, it's all the same: we're not uniters, we're dividers.

Instead of honestly and rationally discussing the true issues facing our country, its economy and its people, and giving the candidates and their positions a fair examination with an unjaundiced eye, we instead waste each other's time with rants about what so-and-so did in college twenty or more years ago, and who what's-her-face had dinner with, and which questionable politico or celebrity is backing whom. We find one divisive, explosive issue - abortion, guns, legalization of this or that - find one out-of-context quote, or long ago event, and blow it up into a frothing, indignant "can you believe this?!" flame-mail, shot out into the Ethernet for all to forward.

Not that the news outlets are any more objective than the emails. I haven't heard anything about Barack Obama's political stance on issues that are important to me. But I did find out from the Associated Press that he had some parking tickets that were 17 years overdue. That's good to know about my potential president. Newsweek did a whole article on how Mitt Romney is a Mormon. The only political issue they mentioned, however, was his position on gay marriage. And Hillary Clinton? Will she ever not have mud on her?