Bailing Myself Out

I didn’t expect that actually trying to keep up with the election was gonna depress me so much that I would get so sick of it, to the point where I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either candidate.

(Well, I won’t go so far as to say I fell into depression. Maybe a recession, and it took till now to get myself bailed out).

I was spoiled the first time I voted in a Presidential (actually, any) election, in 1992. At that point, being pro-Israel dovetailed perfectly with the politics of the Democratic Party; the convention in New York was described as one of the most overtly pro-Israel in years.

Contrast that with the fact that only four years before, in Atlanta, Jesse Jackson and his minions (e.g., Alton Maddox and Vernon Mason) had hijacked the proceedings and practically made the pre-Oslo Arafat Dukakis’ running mate; add to that the image of Pat Buchanan making the keynote speech in Houston at the 1992 GOP convention. The choice for a pro-Israel voter was ostensibly as obviously Democratic then as Republican now. In 1992 it wasn’t all that difficult to be liberal and pro-Israel.

What made the 2008 cycle ultimately so depressing was that it became increasingly more difficult to intellectually justify my vote beyond the Israel factor, especially since I continue to bend over backwards to try to convince myself and others that I’m not conservative. After watching the Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin (forget the Supreme Court decisions---couldn’t name a NEWSPAPER or MAGAZINE???? Hell-LLLO?!?!?) it became well-nigh impossible.

(I’ve concluded that Bristol Palin preganacy was not the result of her lack of access to sex ed. She got pregnant because she didn’t have access to ANY ed. Her mother’s knowledge of current events was so lacking, one can only imagine what her daughter’s intellectual proclivities were.)

The good thing about this election is that it seems that the truly toxic partisan elements of our political culture seem to have played themselves out. Granted, things in general are a lot messier now than they were in 2000 and 2004, and there seems to be at least some salient idea, however nebulous, of what’s at stake, and that we all may be on the same side, after all.