diagnosis

I always read the news. Well, more accurately, I read easily more than a hundred headlines a day, perhaps half that in ledes, and anywhere from zero to a dozen full articles. I guess I am familiar with the news each day.

But familiarity is all that is necessary. Put aside actual events – medical advances, the thwarted attack in London, the partial attack in Glasgow, Ivan the Terrible Putin visiting WDC – and most of what is left of any repetitive nature is political news. That, I have come to realize at long last, is a contradiction of terms. There is little if any news in politics, at least anymore. It is all opinion.

The Immigration Bill, v2.0, dies a senatorial death. Headline reads, “Bush’s Lost Political Capital.” The lede states that President Bush has suffered a major defeat in the Senate. What?! Bush defeated? I thought Senator Reid was riding this bill through like a cowboy on the trail – and he showed up at the end of the run with most of the herd still grazing fifty miles behind him. The boy couldn’t deliver, and it’s Bush’s fault. Push aside the Senate Leader, where is Kennedy’s face-on-the-wanted-poster in the post-mortem?

I endured the Rise of Gore as his planet-be-hot commercial for rebuilding his trashed intellectual reputation became a replacement for God. Scientists blackballed, schools buying thousands of copies, throngs at airports. Goremania arrived, just without a musical score or cutting-edge hair style. Now the stories push in two directions: his commercial has no scientific durability; Gore reconsider’s run for POTUS.

Illinois champions raising the minimum wage, then the Illinois government won’t pay its contractors the increased cost – so it retains out-of-state contractors that have lower costs.

I just don’t care. Politics is all power for these clowns. It is a game to them. A game, granted, that has and they perceive as very serious and with grave consequences. However, here is what they don’t understand: it is the process that matters. Both sides have such concentrations of power that the end result is no longer something of value. Bills are watered down to practical meaninglessness. If they aren’t crippled at passage, they are in later congressional actions. So we are most often denied a result that has merit. We then need to console ourselves that open debate occurred in the process – but no, open and honest does not happen, and the debate that does occur is not reported without a thick political filter.

This state of affairs is why all I need to do is familiarize myself with the headlines and ledes in order to be fully informed. It is also why I registered as an “Independent” instead of the republican I was since my I began voting. I will still vote for pubs. I find dems to totally lack a respect for an open and free economy, and to be on most levels, well, evil. But I will not allow the pubs to count my number as theirs before an election. As I write now, I actually have no intention of ever voting again.

I am not disaffected, just disinterested.