I don’t understand politics.  Which is to say, I don’t get the people that aren’t politicians and the way they blindly back one political party or the other.

We’ve all got our stance on issues. Economic, social, whatever… You’ve got a stance, one way or the other, and you gather the majority of your opinions and pick a party.  Democratic for the more liberal among us — which is to say, apparently, the hippies — and Republican for the conservatives — or religious zealots and rich people.

If you don’t have a stance on issues, you’re either hopelessly out of touch, or dead, or French.  If you’re not one of those things, you believe that abortion is right or wrong, that taxes should be raised or lowered (and where those taxes should and should not go), that we should be at war with other countries or at peace.  It’s part of being a thinking, feeling human being.

I guess I’m a liberal. I’m not really sure.  I’m pro-choice, anti-censorship, and all for equal taxation.  I don’t really understand the deeper mechanics of economics, so I won’t argue too strenuously on the taxation issue (hey, maybe there’s a good reason that rich people get to keep a higher percentage of their money than the family that can barely keep a roof over their head — what do I know, outside of 1s and 0s and phrygian modal progressions?).  The rest of it, though, is mostly opinion, and we’ve all got assholes.

But then you get things like Rep. Mark Foley emailing and IMing underage boys with naughty (to say the least) intent, and you know what? Contrary to what the press and politicians would have you believe, it’s not about party lines.  What I hear on TV and radio — to wit, that it’s a nefarious plot by the democrats to leak this to the media just in time for elections — and it makes me sick.  Who cares who told who?  What matters is that we’ve got further evidence that the people writing our laws are evidently convinced that they are above those same laws.  We’ve got allegations — that should be looked into without any question — that other lawmakers are covering for them (for political reasons).

I don’t care what party you belong to: if you break the laws that we elected you to write, you should be punished.  This country was founded on a concept of rule by the common man, which means that statistically, we’re going to get more than our fair share of greedy, opportunistic, power-hungry people in our positions of power, versus people that want the best for our country and the people in it.  I can accept that.  What I can’t accept is that your guilt or level thereof seems more and more to be relative to your party affiliation, and the amount of power that party has at the time.

I’m not a fan of Bush and his administration; no secret.  But it’s not that I don’t think they’ve done nothing right (although I can’t think of an example offhand), nor will I zealously decree that they are the worst thing to happen to the US in my memory.  Nor will I say that Clinton was the greatest, having done no wrong. It’s not just that I have opinions on issues that land on both sides of the fence, either.

Maybe what bugs me is hearing the laughable (un)logic spouted by the Rush Limbaughs and the Bill O’Reilly’s, and the almost knee-jerk reactionary comments by Al Frankens and … er… surely there’s another Liberal commentator that isn’t a gigantic wimp?  No?

Although, admittedly, at least Franken backs his arguments up with real, tangible evidence.  And makes me laugh.  Which O’Reilly does too, but I’m laughing with Franken.