WHY I DON’T LIKE POLITICS 

            Politics is a nasty, dirty, disgusting game. Not to say that it’s bad or anything, just that the basic, inherent rules require such acts that we mere Civilian mortals would consider reprehensible, such as having the most disposable morals, accepting so many backroom deals that it’d make a Mafioso jealous, and having to do the nasty dirty work with the foreknowledge that nobody is gonna like what you do and you’re gonna be verbally crucified and sodomized in the Court of Public Opinion. 

            But, again, not to say that it’s bad or anything. 

            It’s like a game of Hide-and-Seek (or Hide-and-go-Seek, for you Goists out there). There are certain rules to Hide-and-Seek… 

            Fuck, lemme start over. I don’t want to go over my hyphen quota for the week. ::ahem:: It’s like a game of Scrabble. There’s a game board, there are rules, there are lots and lots of letters (“speeches”, pols call ‘em), and you try to put all these silly little letters together to form a word that gets you lots and lots of points. The ultimate goal is to get more points than everyone else. Hint: Go for “quartzy”. It’s the highest-scoring word in Scrabble. 

            In either case (and I’m just starting to realize how smart it was to go with Scrabble instead of Hide-and-Seek), you try to spell a word (or, in Pol-parlance, “hold a position”). Obviously, the people that are trying to defeat you and take your position of power and eat your soul so that they might become the all-powerful ruler of mankind (I played some pretty diehard Scrabble games in my time) are going to try to counter your every move. Except, in Scrabble, you’re not allowed to overturn the game board when your opponent uses three Z’s, an X, and a Q on the Sextuple Word Score. In real life, people that do that are called “bad guys”, and soon find themselves staring at the unpleasant end of either a cruise missile, an M-16, or both. 

            So we can see that outright hostility is bad, both in Scrabble and in the rest of the universe. So it’s verboten to the pols of our purdy nation. But there are other tricks. Anyone that has played Scrabble at any appreciably young age will well remember the immortal chant of, “That’s not a word!”, and then you spit and splutter and wring your hands as you try to explain that you saw on the Discovery Channel that a Uzzixiquy is a worm found in (and only in) Madagascar. What follows is an incredibly heated, incredibly vehement, and – if you situate yourself far enough from the action with a tub of popcorn – incredibly funny rant and rave fest that will involve all sorts of nasty invectives, insults, and more personal cat-fighting than you’d see on your average episode of As The World Turns or Women of Wrestling. 

            Such a tactic isn’t undesirable, necessarily. It’s based on the mindset of, hey, if your opponent is cheating, you should call him on it. This, however, is counterbalanced by your own need to liberally (no, not the political “liberal”) push the envelope yourself, rule-wise. Scrabble should be a Las Vegas game, because a good bluffer will always win. You need to continually balance your ability to catch your opponent’s less-savory moves while being able to either hide your own, or preemptively negate the damage done when one of your own fibs is erected into the spotlight. 

            A good Scrabble player will know this. He’ll also know that someone that always lies about their crazy vocabulatic (if Shakespeare can invent words, so can I) meanderings will have very little pull with the general pool of players. The “Boy Who Cried Wolf” syndrome. “Whattaya mean, ‘eructation’ is another word for ‘burp?’ Last time you said that ‘Yurquiv’ was a term for bladder infections!” He’ll get booed and hissed out of the game. 

            Well, assuming that the players don’t have a dictionary. Or that they just have a really crappy one. 

            Further, a player has to pick and choose his battles. Say, for instance, that a player did get away with the Yurquiv thing… only to have, in the next game, his opponent use the exact same word, despite the fact that everyone knows it’s not a real word. What’re you gonna do? Admit that you pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes? Of course not. That ruins your reputation… just as honest intelligent people get respect from other honest intelligent people, liars must coexist with and tolerate fellow liars. That’s why the term “hypocrite” is bandied around so much. 

            In any case, this translates into politics rather well, much better than I originally thought when I randomly picked some pop-culture gaming icon out of thin air. 

            There’s a certain equation to politics, and it all comes back to us. Everything a politician does is based on whether or not they think we’ll like it. Obviously, what we like and don’t like varies wildly. Sure, there are some things most everyone (save the occasional screwball) agrees on… Taxes are inevitable, Women should be allowed to vote, black folks are not merely 3/5’s of a person, and Carrot Top should suffer in the flames of Hades that consume but do not burn. 

            These issues, the basics, I’ll call Class 1 Issues. 

            Hmm… nope, that’s pretty boring. I’ll call them “Code Alpha Engagements.” Sounds cooler, and hopefully the phrase’ll catch on. I’d love to hear Limbaugh use the term, squeezed out ‘twixt his jiggling, addicted jowls. Code Alpha Engagements are the untouchable issues of politics… when’s the last time you heard of any politician of any appreciable reputation talk about re-instituting slavery? 

            Understand something. For the most part, almost everyone agrees on almost everything. The vast majority of arguments are over subjects of the vast minority of actual significance. You never hear anyone talk about most of the universally-agreed-upon issues because, well, who wants to talk about something so dull? It’s conflict that drives life, baby! That’s why modern politics are designed to resemble a WWE grudge match. Hell, Bush, I’m sure, even has his own theme song for the upcoming re-election. 

            Now that I think about it, seeing Bush and Kerry settle things in the ring would be pretty damned cool. But I digress. 

            Below the Code Alpha Engagements, you get the Code Beta Engagements. These are the issues that won’t go away any time soon, but you still get people that try to take a crack at ‘em. Abortion, f’rinstance, was pretty much a dead issue under Clinton, but got new fears pumped into it when Bush was running for the Pale Palace. Gun Control is another issue that only recently became a Code Beta Engagement. Interest in restricting weapons soared to prominence a few years back with the “rash” of school shootings and such, but the overall decline in crime rates in general and gun-related crime in particular has shooed that issue off into the background. 

            It all revolves around time scale, you see. Alpha Engagements refer to aspects of public opinion that change very slowly, over the course of several decades. The Women’s Suffrage movement ‘round the turn of the century took ages to gain acceptance. Same with the Civil Rights movement, and now today with homosexual rights. Slowly, ever so slowly, things are coming around. Not quickly enough for some folks (typically the “liberal” side) and far too quickly for some others (typically the “conservatives”). 

            Then, finally, we have the Code Omega Engagements, the crazy psycho hyped-out heated-up issues-of-the-day (what was that I was saying about hyphen quotas?). The War in Iraq. The War in Afghanistan. Enron. The Lewinsky Scandal. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Star Wars (Reagan’s, not Lucas’s). Whether or not to put M&M’s or Reese’s Pieces in the Congress vending machine. These are not the critical issues of our time, winning only minor mentions in the History books of the future. But they get the most press, attention, and coverage. These are the fickle stoner cousins of the political family, the flakes that no one can really rely on in the long-term, but tend to amuse us while they’re around. 

            And now I can finally get back to Scrabble. I’m such a windbag. 

            See, Code Alpha and Code Beta Engagements are typically left alone. One of the few exceptions is the Economy, which is a Code Beta when it’s good, and a Code Omega when it’s bad. 

            Now, as in Scrabble – or even Poker, but I didn’t spend a page and a half ranting about Poker, so fuck it – Politicians have to have certain priorities. They need to pick which issues to support, which to denigrate, and play their tactics so that they can get their preferred picks across. For instance, if Bibble P. Worthenblatt, R-CA., wanted to run on a campaign of “Orange-pickers Unite”, he’ll obviously stress the plight of Orange-pickers at the expense of several other issues. If he’s good, he can pull some strings, make some concessions here and there – say, perhaps, imposing higher taxes on Apples – in order to get his pro-Orange-picker (goddamned hyphens) legislation passed. 

            See, Politics isn’t merely the act of sitting down and writing out everything that you think “should” happen. Because that’s impossible. If you tried to pass every piece of positive legislation that you wanted to get passed, you’d wind up being an utterly impotent leader of the free peoples. 

            Everything has currency. In politics, as in Scrabble, it’s reputation. A person that knows his words and manages to pull off some rather crazy words in a game of Scrabble soon develops a reputation for being someone that… knows his words, and manages to pull off some rather crazy words in a game of Scrabble. Such a person will have a greater deal of leeway on the rare occasion that he wants to pull a fast one on people. 

            I swear to God that this will make sense. I swear. 

            A politician needs to have certain issues he supports, ones he opposes, and ones that he needs to be on the fence about. This third category is, by far, the largest. In Scrabble, the only currency is brains. In Politics, the only currency is issues. If you want to score points in Issue A, you might have to give a little in Issue B. If you want to have Senators Furgle, Torgson, and Balter support your Orange-picker legislation, you may find yourself in a position where you have to support their Kitty-smasher legislation, despite the fact that you might’ve initially opposed it. 

            Why is this? It’s a gamble. The politician is gambling that people like Orange-pickers more than they hate Kitty-smashers. Just as a Scrabble player gambles that his opponents respect his wordiness more than they hate losing. 

            So that’s where the Scrabble analogy really comes in. Since there are so many goddamned issues out there, and since nobody can support them all, it comes a matter of trying to piece all the various issues together – some you like, some you hate – and hope you get just the right combination of issues you support, preferably high-point issues such as gay rights or pandering to religious groups, to spell out a winning political campaign. 

            ‘Course, landing on the Triple Word Score is the political equivalent of backroom dealings, under-the-table (hy-y-y-yphens, yay!) shenanigans, and out-and-out illegal bribes. “How the fuck is it the same?” asks thee. “Because,” answers I, “if you do either one of them – and, in politics, get caught – you’re gonna be hated.” Because nobody likes to lose out to someone that got a big advantage. 

            And, like the bluffing that often needs to go on in Scrabble (okay, I admit the typical Scrabble game utilizes very little bluffing… I just always found it fun to make up words and see if it works), a politician needs a good track record of supporting the issues he makes the forefront of his campaign. 99% of dirty politics involves trying to convince people that Senator Diddlethumb really doesn’t give a crap about the plight of the Neptunian Hamster, because, golly! Ten years ago he voted to build a nuclear plant in their natural habitat! 

‘Course, his vote in that issue was necessitated by his need to get five other senators to support another issue that he needed support for to convince a special-interest group to donate two million smackeroos to his re-election campaign and not out of any moral or ethical decision… but that all makes for one really shitty sound bite. 

Politics is the art of doing what Tarantino excels at and what Shakespeare sucked at… brevity. You don’t call your opponents “People that have a moral code that believes the choice of a woman trumps the potential life of a fetus,” you call them “Pro-death.” Makes a better bumper sticker. 

The ultimate point about politics is that it’s not simple. Bush didn’t go into Iraq solely because he wanted oil. Yeah, that’s part of it. But not the only part (really, the only reason anyone is over there… oh, nevermind. Irrelevant to the point). There were other games going on, and despite what you think, believe, or think you believe about the situation, there is no clear-cut way to explain the entirety of the situation in fifteen words or less. There’s not even a way to explain the majority of a situation thusly. 

I would caution anybody to avoid politics that bring things down to such a simple, all-or-nothing approach. People that oppose the war aren’t “traitors,” they’re folks that have complex beliefs for complex reasons, and their subjective worldview, generally, is just as valid as the equally subjective worldview of a guy that thinks the war is right. And, furthermore, that guy isn’t a “fascist” for the beliefs he holds. 

Not that I wanna get preachy. Not because I don’t think my opinion has any weight, I just don’t think anyone listens when someone gets preachy. And besides, I was talking about Scrabble. 

The reason I hate politics is because it always feels like trying to write a two-paragraph essay pertaining to every tidbit of information that exists in the Library of Congress. Sure, it’s possible, but what you wind up with is such a flat, stale, stupidly simplified version of what’s actually there that it becomes an utterly useless end product. And that useless end product becomes the basis of someone else’s opinion. 

And the only reason I give a damn is because, every now and then, that flat, stale, stupidly simplified version of what beliefs are actually held is, every now and then, applied to me. 

F’rinstance, if you were to stand up in a room populated by right-leanin’ folks, and announced, “I am a Democrat,” most people in that room will assume that you support NAMBLA, or that you go to crazy drug-induced orgies, or that you masturbate every night to the thought of banning Christianity. We’re in a polarized, worst-case-scenario environment where you get tossed into one of only two possible slots: “My side” and “Their side.” ‘Course, just about every pundit known to man, God, and anything else that might be out there, has made that sort of pessimistic/fatalistic angst-filled lament. Trust me, I’ll give myself thirty lashes in penance, conformity be damned. 

Anyhow, this is a very dangerous situation to be in, as the potential for abuse is so rampant that it scares the piss outta me. 

An example of such polarization… well, look, I thought it prudent to keep my own personal views out of this as much as possible, as they are quite irrelevant to the point. However, I currently lack the imagination to drum up a hypothetic, so here goes… 

 I have supported the war (yes, yes, boo and hiss, shaddap… like I said, what I think isn’t important). In mentioning my support for the war, I get accosted with typical demands one would make of the typical pro-war type: “Where’re the WMD’s?” (despite the fact that I’ve never said I thought they were there), “Did you know Bush lied to us?” (yes, I “know” that, only in the sense that I know that he was one of many groups – including the UN – that have claimed to “know” that Saddam had WMD’s), or else they’d accuse me of being a rabid Christian or Jew (neither of which is the case). 

So how do I argue with that? “Uh… I’m not…”  

“FASCIST!”  

“No, no, lemme explain.” 

“War-mongerer!” 

“Wait, hold on there…” 

“Babykiller!” 

“Just a minute…!” 

“N*Sync Fan!” 

“That does it!” 

Well. I’m not immune to taunts. And, really, that’s what politics is. No, it’s not what it has “become”, that’s what politics has been since the dawn of sentience, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. The Greeks played dirty politics. The Romans played dirty politics. The only American president to not have to deal with petty High School bullshit was Washington. That’s how politics works, and that’s how it will continue to work. We, Joe and Jane Public, are exposed, through mass-media, to only the surface level. If all you watch is CNN, you’re not getting the whole picture. If all you watch is Fox News, you’re not getting the whole picture. 

And, again, I certainly don’t want to give off the impression I think this is a case of “liberals are evil!” Because that would make me a hypocrite. And it’d be very hypocritical of me to be a hypocrite in a rant denouncing the hypocrisy of hypocrites. 

Jesus. Anyway. I’d like to avoid giving off that impression. Because for every Yin W. Bush, there’s a Yang Jefferson Clinton, and both of ‘em look like the same stupid cymbal-crashing wind-up monkey-toy. I get called a fascist, people who are against the war get called traitors and terrorists. That’s the way it goes. Simple fact of the matter is that there’re assholes on both sides of the line, and guess what, Sweetie Gonzales, we’re them. At least, we are in the eyes of the assholes on the other side… 

A political asshole is a little different than a real asshole. A real asshole is… well… an asshole. They’re like art, or porn… it’s hard to define just what an asshole is, but golly, you sure know it when you see it. But a political asshole, he’s only an asshole when it comes to… politics. Y’know. Political… then, asshole… gah. What are the characteristics? Here’s what to anticipate: If you’re in a group of people that are all getting along swimmingly, and then suddenly bring up a recent political topic… bam!! They’re up either ranting about the fucking illegal aliens stealing jobs, or they’re bitching about the Jehovah’s witnesses that just… won’t… leave them alone. And woe be unto anyone that da-a-a-a-are disagree! 

In any case, a political asshole is a person that will ruin everyone’s night the second a political topic of significance is mentioned. I think that’s an apt definition. 

Just like Scrabble, we have access to a dictionary. And just like in Scrabble, actually stopping to look up the actual facts is a time-consuming pain in the ass, when most people would rather just keep right on playing. This results in speeding up the game, true, but it also enhances the possibility of cheaters getting through the system, and we’re bereft with leaders that are more fluff than substance. 

But I guess that’s okay. After all, it’s only Scrabble. 

Now, I know that everybody and their asshole has an opinion on politics, and I’m no different. Believe me, I know I’m a dick. I just hope my words can stand on their own two feet. But what really, really, really, really, above and beyond all else, what, in actuality, bothers me the most is the fact that, like all half-decent words of advice, the people that need to listen are the very ones that won’t. I lash out at dumbed-down sound-bite politics, and the people that do that are the ones that would think, “Oh, it’s those liberals that always do that,” or, “That’s just those awful conservatives.” (Look, if you actually did think that… just… oh, nevermind. That, too, is utterly irrelevant to the point). 

I just think that there’s going to be a slight shift away from invective behaviors and skullduggery in the future. As long as we have dirty politics, we’ll have dirty politicians… and eventually people will get tired, sick, bored, or annoyed with those dirty politicians. They ain’t all bad. Just realize that any positive-seeming shift will be pretty short-lived. Hell, Dubya was a popular mother-mo-fucker just after the towers tumbled, and that dissipated right enough, eh? But politics is like a game of Scrabble. 

Y’know, I don’t much like to play Scrabble anymore, either.