my one political post

I have thus far avoided any political opinion posts on my facebook,* but I'm writing now, before my opinion becomes moot. 

I sincerely dislike politics. 

The very word "Politics" has negative connotations, bringing to mind a sense of falseness, duplicity, acting. I work with actors. they are very good at making you believe whatever they want. And that is what our political forums have turned into: an act. 

An Oxford professor, Dr. Peter Hacker, recently gave a small lecture at BYU. He stated eloquently that the standard of awareness and real news has been corrupted by mass media communication. We have corrupted the practice of real citizen involvement and discussion. We cannot have serious debates any more because all of our politicians are pre-packedged and pre-programmed. 

To the average voter, to most of Americans, there is no real discussion on what the real problems are, and what real potential solutions might be. There are no conversations, no compromises, and as far as I can tell, there are very few facts. 

Negative campaign ads that take statistics out of context, or commercials that blow up one line from a an entire speech, and ignorant, polarized commentary everywhere, even among my own friends and family.

I would never claim to be an expert on politics, I don't consider myself even politically aware, so that is why some of my experiences drove further the point of my frustration. I worked on both campaigns. Albeit for a short amount of time, I was involved in campaigning for both Romney and Obama in this election, in hopes, both times, to become more educated and aware of the scene. And both sides were as ignorant and closed-minded as the other. A main focus, as far as I could tell, was to villainize the opponent. No one--on either side--mentioned the other candidate's policies, except to remark plainly how insane or awful they were. 

These campaigns have created a necessity to vote, not discuss. They need to motivate voters by rousing passions, providing a sense of urgency; each side is assailing us with a feeling of desperation that the other candidate will destroy our nation--nay, the world. I feel slightly manipulated because of such extremist thinking. 

Also, people tend to jump to conclusions, in order to sound more convincing. (Let's be honest, we've all done that when writing persuasive essays--right?)  

But in their passions, they sometimes skip over some logic. 

A very intelligent, politically active friend of a friend of mine said something to this effect: 

• To my friends who 'say' you believe in women's rights...You're voting for Romney because of his economic abilities? Well look me in the eye and tell me that your take-home pay is more important than your fundamental civil rights, dignity as a citizen of this country... the mental welfare and emotional well-being of your youth, and your very personhood.

And on the other side, we've all heard the argument somewhere along the lines of:

• If you don't want this country to get dragged down to hell by this incompetent, socialist who's ashamed of America, we need to get Obama OUT of the white house! 

What logical fallacies! Romney is not going to take away women's rights. Also, just because he doesn't believe in gay marriage does not mean that the dignity and emotional and mental well-being of our youth is under attack. And need I remind the country that Obama has ALREADY been president for four years? Yes, we have problems, but we are not stuck in hell, and we certainly do not have an incompetent leader. 

They raised upwards of $900 million EACH for this campaign. Obviously both of these men got where they are by having outrageous amounts of support. Neither of them are idiots. Please stop insulting my own intelligence by telling me to vote for one because the other is awful and crazy and incompetent. 

Because he's not. 

Good luck to both of these men. 

Maybe some day, one of these politicians will acknowledge that his opponent had a good idea? Wouldn't that be interesting. 

I'll keep dreaming.  

To my politically-active friends: please tell me what I am missing here. 

*The one facebook post about politics I wrote was to announce that first-time colorado voters need to attach a copy of their license in an absentee ballot. But it was a non-partisan announcement, and turned out to be false anyway. (If they sent you an absentee ballot, they already had your registered license number).