I hate politics.

Reading this post over at Retractiones got me thinking; I share his huge disenchantment with politics right now. I believe in libertarian principles and would like to have a non-ideological Man of Integrity in the White House. I was/am a Ron Paul supporter. No, he’s not president material but he’s a figurehead of the libertarian resistance, and for his ideas I support him. However, now that he apparently won’t run third party, I really don’t know if I’ll even bother voting in November.

The other candidates are equally terrifying. I remember elections and election coverage all the way back to ‘92 (although that one’s a bit foggy to me, since I was only 7), but I don’t remember “the issues” mattering so little when it came to who people vote for. I have no idea what any of the candidates believe in apart from maybe one issue each.

Huckabee is Mr. Evangelical with some loony FairTax which isn’t a good idea by anyone. McCain is a maverick, I think? I’m getting confused nowadays. I keep hearing that he’s against torture, then now he votes against the waterboarding ban…huh? Of course, he’s such a warhawk I couldn’t support him ever.

Then of course, you have Obama, the blank slate that all the progressive types regard as the watershed candidacy in their new reign. Even crunchy cons seem to be swayed by him (which I suppose isn’t surprising, since they’re quasi-progressives themselves). He does seem like a nice guy, with maybe some integrity. Just forget the fact that he’s all for sticking crap into babies’ heads and killing them…sure, great guy!

I feel kinda sorry for Hillary – she’s pure evil, of course, but it must be supremely frustrating to have your candidacy, which has been enshrined for years now, suddenly be taken away by a guy who is supported without really having any message. Wait, I take that back, he does have a message. I think the Onion summed it up perfectly: “Pro-hopes, also supports dreams”. Seriously, I would be really mad if I were Hillary.

The level of stupidity in this election is shocking. As the culture wars wind down, American Idol is taking its place as the model for and driving force of presidential elections. I was listening to NPR the other day; they were interviewing a woman who said roughly this: “I really want to vote for Obama, because he has this kind of rock-star persona, and I’m really drawn to that. But ultimately, Hillary is more from my generation. She was a real trailblazer as a woman, and I’ve blazed a few trails myself as a woman, so I feel like I really ought to vote for her.”

The fact that Obama is now the frontrunner for the Democrats just highlights my ultimate point: part of the reason that the American people are so intentionally stupid when it comes to the upcoming election is that we all know, deep down inside, that there’s no difference between the candidates. The past eight years have made this supremely obvious, and that is why I am sick of politics. The Bush administration played religious conservatives big time; I was one of them. The Democrats swore in 2006 to stand up and put a stop to it; they didn’t. In fact, they’ve practically helped him out, except in those moments where it was convenient to oppose him for political reasons.

Who our next president is, Republican or Democrat, “conservative” or “liberal”, matters very little. The government will be just as bloated and corrupt as it ever has been, and legislation will be alternately oppressive and useless. The biggest issue that we face is this: whose all-encompassing media presence do you want to put up with for the next four or eight years? Whose face do you want to see on TV, whose voice do you want to hear on the radio? Who do you want to sound more shrill, Republicans or Democrats? Nothing else will change for normal people like you and me.