Um, so I just have a few points I want to make. We Americans will never get past partisanship. Just can't do it. The us v. them, Hutu v. Tutsi, yin/yang, Kobe/Shaq mentality is just ingrained in the human psyche. Evolutionary, biological, chemical -- whatever the cause, it's a phenomenon that won't go away. Wait, I got an theory on the cause. The universe is too complicated for any of us to fully understand. To understand ourselves and our place in that universe requires us to define ourselves by who we are not. And so to deal with the uncertainty, we must always find an enemy.Regardless of whether you buy into that explanation or not, just know that I want to go on record now (future edits notwithstanding) that if Barack Hussein Obama wins the election, he will not be remembered as a president who destroyed partisanship. I mean, I believe him that he wants to move beyond partisanship. And I believe there are others who do as well. I'm just saying it won't happen cause they are vastly outnumbered. There's too many people in this country that will never move beyond tribalism, no matter how that tribalism is reflected. And in our first world modern post industrial society, our tribalism is the partisanship where the enemies are members of another political party.
I mean, c'mon people. Seriously. If you don't think you're part of the problem here, write down your political principles -- you know, all the reasons that you said you hated a candidate -- then hold yourself to a standard of complete honesty -- to see how and when those principles waiver. Cause they will waiver, they always do. (Many ideologues now denounce Bush for going away from conservative principles like expanding the size of the federal government and debt but when creating new entitlement programs resulted in electoral success there was a curious silence.) And what it comes down to in a lot of cases is essentially just picking a side and sticking with it. A predetermined friend versus the amorphous enemy.
Also, must keep my word about reviewing the Dark Knight. It was good, not great and Heath Ledger was pretty awesome.
