Introduction I - Stupid Politics

                                POLITICS

  We can get the ridiculous right out of the way but as a way to introduce the kind of person I am, I suppose this is a wide enough topic to start with.  When it comes to political affiliation, I've quit.  I no longer vote and I'm content to live for my family, operating withing the rules they put on us.  Because to fight it or to care too much about it is pure insanity.   I suppose the most honest way I view the political system is this:  Imagine a huge machine that keeps your daily life running and every once in a while there's a time when some gears need to be changed out as part of routine maintenance.  To make it fun for everyone and to make them feel as if they can somehow have a say in how this big machine works to run their lives, they allow us to choose the gear we use.  We're presented with two gears, one blue, one red.  We're told this is a huge decision and we must consider the value of each gear and decide what one we think will make the machine work to benefit us most.  There are preconceived ideas that either the blue or red gear will interact with other parts and obviously give us a certain result, all the benefits of each gear are spelled out on the box label and we all get charged up with vigor when we decide on what gear we want.  We fight over it, we try to sway our loved ones to see it our way.....that the other gear just cannot work.  What I decided to do one day was take each gear out of the box and look them over.  I held them in my hands, they weighed the same.  I put them against each other, all the cogs lined up and they were the same diameter and thickness.  I looked at the stamp on each product to see they were made at the same facility.  Then, I decided to wash off the paint to discover two identical silver gears.  They are simply packaged and sold to us, making us believe we're making some kind of educated choice in the matter.  They can paint the gears any color they like, once the're put in the machine, they're a stainless steel, factory made, generic part that is designed to keep a machine running.  A machine that has been running longer than anyone I know can remember and that was designed by people who died generations ago.  Yet somehow the factory is still making these gears and we keep on buying them up, expecting that somehow this machine will change its course.  I stopped buying it.