ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Sometimes, usually every four years or so, I get awfully discouraged about the state of America. As a socially liberal, fiscally conservative atheist, I am a strange hybrid who goes pretty much entirely unrepresented in contemporary politics. And this is never brought more obviously into the forefront than when politicians are desperately grappling with each other in the course of the giant popularity contest we call an election.

I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition while waiting for the bus today, taking in the clips of the stupid candidates making their stupid speeches, which I generally hate because they say lots of things that threaten all my favorite personal principles, such as advocating religion for everyone, or socialism for everyone. And Hillary was talking about how some people have the money for health insurance, but don’t consider it important, and how that has to stop and she is personally going to make sure that nobody doesn’t have health insurance. And this really bothered me. I mean, who the fuck does she think she is? America’s mom? Shouldn’t we have the right to make our own decisions about things like this, even bad ones?

I hate the attitude that Americans seem to have now, which is that if there are people who don’t fit into your worldview, well, there is probably some kind of legislation that needs to happen to fix that. And everybody who tries to stop that must be demonized as the enemy. I’m picking on Democrats now, but the GOP is just as guilty of this. In fact, I have a hard time deciding which side I hate more. It’s like the Democratic party is the Kurt Vonnegut dystopia, while the Republicans are Margaret Atwood. The Democrats want to protect all of us from having to go through the pain of making our own mistakes and decisions, while the Republicans want to protect all of us from having a balanced Supreme Court (I miss you, Sandra Day O’Connor!).

After Hillary I got to listen to some Obama stuff. And I was thinking about how I don’t feel any particular way about him. And since I had nothing to do and the bus was late, I started thinking about why that was, I mean, since he and Hillary probably have many of the same viewpoints. And I realized it was because I don’t object to the things he says in his speeches. But, who could find his speeches objectionable? Is he really saying anything at all?

And I had this kind of weird, multifaceted epiphanal moment in which I realized that I do not have any American pride, at least not for the US as it currently exists. I have pride in a lot of our history, but I really don’t have any respect for most of our current population of self-righteous, self-entitled, and self-aggrandizing idiots who have abandoned actual American principles in our constant search for, I don’t know, more crap, more satisfaction, just more. And I think this is a largely post WWII thing. I think this “everyone is special and everyone deserves to have a great life and to be protected from their own bad decisions” attitude started largely with the boomers. And maybe it’s not fair to imply that Americans now are so much stupider than in the past. There have always been people who were less intelligent, but in the past I don’t think it mattered as much back then because people had a “work ethic” and took pride in “a job well done” and other quaint, outdated things like that. Not that I really want to be living in 1948 - I’m not kidding myself about the bad things about those days, like racism, sexism, and lack of internet.

I know a lot of this is just pointless kvetching. Some things are better now. Some things are worse. And it’s not like there’s another country I’d rather be living in right now. Most places with decent living conditions are coping with basically the same semi-socialist nanny-state government we are. And maybe I’m just the sort of person who spends a lot of time being annoyed by pretty much everything other people do when they form into groups.

I might get stuck voting for that stooge McCain this fall and I don’t care how many lobbyists he slept with, or didn’t sleep with, or whatever the official story is now.  Oh, and I stole the term “nanny-state” from my boyfriend.