Well, Super Tuesday is almost upon us. Oh joy; oh rapture. I'm in Arizona, which means I'm part of the masses who will cast their vote on Feb. 5. Well, hopefully. I have to send for an absentee ballot (oh the joys of out-of-state undergraduate studies) and frankly I'm having a hard time getting up the energy to care enough to do it. Don't get me wrong, I understand that this is "exciting" stuff. I understand that this next presidential race is "pivotal": just like every other presidential race. Am I a fan of Bush? My goodness no. For one, he went along with that asinine Real ID scheme, which he should have sent back, money be damned. That, by the way, is pushing ahead like an out of control train. So, yes, I'm looking forward to a new President.

But seriously, these clowns? I can't find ONE candidate who I can vote for in any race other than lead clown in Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily Circus. Since when have politicians been stuffed shirts and talking heads, and since when has being a "true American" meant subscribing to an ideology, and yes I am pointing my finger at both sides of the aisle. Whatever happened to the common good? Because frankly, I think being the world's policeman is NOT our common good. If we're going to be truly international, then why is no one willing to say: Yeah, we're gonna sort of pull out of here and there are let EUROPE, with their UNION, start taking charge. Or, you know, the Red Cross in the African AIDS crisis.

Since when is politics a panacea? We went from a country built on a healthy, though not excessive, amount of distrust of think tanks and leaders who were distant, to a bunch of sheep. Yes, I'm pissed, and I'm pissed at every stripe of political activist and party member. I'm missing the days when a primary vote meant voting for the lesser of who cares, because it was better then evil and more evil and stupid. I'm tired of people on the East Coast acting like they know exactly how life everywhere in the country is (if that's true, then why are there no border police? It isn't because we're happy about an open border down here.) I'm tired of people on the West Coast dismissing everything that comes from the East Coast because it must be biased. I'm not sick of the Mid-West, mainly because I think they may have been too trampled to get their prejudices out there.

Maybe some of our founders were right: maybe their dream of a great and glorious federal republic just can't exist over such a broad swath of land. Maybe the political traditions of East Coast and West Coast are too divergent. Maybe we need to have federal republics by region that join to form a confederacy style union, like in Europe. I don't know that there's even an answer. All I know is that I cannot lend even my feeble voice of support to any candidate on my ballot, and that thought alone is enough to make me weep.