kattitudes

This is an important year. Well, actually, every presidential election is important. We are a democracy, which means that every four years, we (the people) have the unique privilege of getting to argue with our neighbors and strangers across our nation, both in print and online, in the media and through the airwaves, about issues that we each individually hold dear.

Strangely, we seem to have morphed into a nation that does not give a tinker’s damn about the other person’s issue, as long as we can out shout them on our issue.

Usually, I keep most matters of politics out of the blog, but as I age (like fine wines and cheeses) I am getting even more opinionated and I figured that since it is my blog, I might as well go on record.

My record of choice is that we should make a choice. There. How is that for controversial? Actually, I have much more controversial views than that, such as how some of these fellows are downright dangerous to our nation, but that is as common a theme as any that you hear every four years.

When I first started at University, I thought I wanted to be an economist. I loved the theory of how people used money. I thought that was so interesting. But then, I took my first political science class, and I was lost forever. I found my love. The theories of why mankind came together. Why we argue. Why we make the choices we make. What draws us as a community. What draws us into a community. Political theory - I just loved it. Even now, I remember with such fondness how much I enjoyed deciphering for my first time all the texts that students of politics had done a hundred million times before me.

I then became involved in student government and learned a quick lesson in how dirty you must be in order to succeed. Wow. It was more than I could accept, I freely admit to that now. In my experience, there was really no place for honor in politics. Most really did have to sell their soul and at such a little price and young age. But that is another story for another day. Someday I will have to tell that story because it really is an interesting one.

However, my foray into government was on a major scale as my student government (that I did spent a few years in quite successfully) was for a university with a population of some fifty thousand people. Yes, it was indeed a large scale school. My working budget was close to nine million dollars. It was a lot of responsibility. And it gave me an unexpected insight into the personalities that get involved in politics and what they are willing to do and become to be successful.

It is hard to separate all the rhetoric that spews from the candidates mouths. I am honest. If you are not a political junkie, then the machinations and contraptions of the election process can be about as interesting as the Internal Revenue Service.

Even the “easy to read” help-you-pick-your-candidate handouts I have seen are no help because they are usually a boggy mess of information that is too much for this sound bite familiar world. It is no insult. We spend our time thinking about issues, but do not necessarily need to spend fourteen pages evaluating the fine nuances of how a candidate feels about the issue. We want a yes/no answer. Sometimes it is as simple as that.

As a result, I am really liking the oversimplistic quiz that my local news station put together to help you pick your candidate. Just like any other blog quiz, it allows you to choose how strongly you feel on an issue, and matches you with the candidate that most closely lines up with your values.

What I like is that this quiz gives you results for all the candidates (it shows you how closely they relate to your answers by percentage). The quiz also links to all types of additional information on each candidate and their stance on issues, so that if you feel like reading an additional 14 pages to get the detailed nuances of how each individual feels about the matter at hand, that information is available to you right there.

Hopefully, if you are as of yet undecided, this will help make your voting choice much easier. Once that choice is made, it truly is important for you to get out and vote. Our nation is built on our votes. Yes, America will survive if you do not vote. But you have the right to vote. You get to vote because you are an American.

Sometimes it feels like all we get are taxes and tickets and more taxes. Get yourself one of the best benefits of living in America. Take part in the seminal American process. Vote for our leader. Vote for your boss. Say who you want to speak for you so that you can spend the next four years happily able to join in arguments by saying either “hey, I didn’t vote for him/her” or “hey, at least I voted for him/her”.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under kat chat, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.