Do people forward you as much political “humor” as they send to me? Since I started publishing this site, I get even more of it.
Just this week, different people sent me the two graphics here. One person sent a batch of anti-Republican stickers asking if I could use them. And then I got a batch of anti-Democratic graphics from another friend, with a note saying, “I didn’t know if you could use any of these graphics on your website or not. Very good bumper stickers.”
I appreciate my friends’ good intentions. I really do. (In fact, a few of you send me things that do turn into article ideas. You know who you are. Thanks.) But politics is already vacuous enough without dumbing it down even further. This isn’t what I want to be about. I don’t want to be “room noise” or “elevator music,” to steal a couple of phrases from an obscure old song.
Simplistic sloganeering such as what you see here doesn’t help anyone. Honestly, I don’t even find it funny. I will gladly take something I disagree with and write about why I think someone is wrong. I realize that some people don’t appreciate that — as was discussed in the comments of that article — but it’s a balance I try to strike between ideas, on the one hand, and attracting new readers, on the other. But most of what I see offered as political discourse today strikes me as the equivalent of children on a playground shouting insults at one another.
We repeat what we fail to repair, so I keep re-learning old lessons
Without the state, who would plow roads? We and our neighbors will
Shock merger: Democrats, GOP to join in creating new ‘super party’
A childhood belief haunts me: unless I’m perfect, I’m unloved
Here’s proof (if you need more) that people want something for nothing
Rational rules don’t apply when the state gives itself a monopoly
We won’t be free until politicians lose power to control the Internet
I am angry that life doesn’t work the way I once learned it should
Leave your dead past behind; that’s not where you’re going