The only good thing about election day in America is if you're one of those lucky individuals who gets the day off (I am
).
While stupid people buying into democracy as a form of government doesn't bug me, I don't think I'll ever get over seemingly intelligent people who actually think the system (at the national level at least), is anything more than a pressure-relief valve for controlling a society. And, when I have otherwise intelligent friends get engrossed in this back and forth between Obama and Romney, I just shake my head.
At least in the past, once elections were over, I could regain my rational friends for a few years, but increasingly with the 24/7 news cycle, it's becoming a neverending election, even after a person "wins", and good friends continue their pointless back and forth non-stop stick-it-to-'em soundbites, without a break from one election day through the next.
In so many ways I find the early promise of the internet that we all had in the early 90s as this vehicle for bringing the world together has done exactly the opposite.
When we were generally isolated to our immediate communities, we compromised to peacefully co-exist with each other, but today's online global community made it much easier to find people with one's views, and compromise went out the window, as people have little incentive to try to work things out with billions of other people available to choose from to act as their perfect sounding board if any particular person happens to inconveniently fit one's quaint views on the world. Partisanship, not just in politics, is the dark underbelly of the increasingly online society of today.
Oh well. The weather looks great today. Taking my two nieces to the beach (their parents unfortunately do NOT have the day off, heh), where I'll continue to educate them in the proper way to grill steaks and body-surf; far more important issues than which idiot becomes the next hand-puppet in chief.