It's a War Zone Out There

I’m just a voter, like many of you. And over the last few years I’m feeling kind of used. I’m not sure who has my best interest at heart. It seems like every politician I hear from has the same message.  “I will fight for you!” Listen to them… they all say the same thing. “I will fight for you!” Personally I will stick my neck out and say that I have no enemies at this time here at home.

My wife is a relatively calm person, she does possess a fairly good throwing arm, but we don’t entertain all that often, having two vicious Maltese, and we just don’t have anyone to fight.  So, I really don’t need anyone fighting for me. Now, if there was someone out there, heaven forbid, who was going to come by and steal my riding mower, the weedwacker or one of the dogs, we’ve got a problem.

But…I don’t think I would call my local politician and say, “Dear representative, will you please fight for me?” What exactly are they fighting for? It seems, in the age in which we live, in order to run for office and be elected one has to be fighting for something. Therefore, politicians put themselves in a fighting mode to fight for us when we really don’t need anyone to do that. Then they get to wherever the fighting is supposed to take place, like a legislature or someplace and there you go, they find the other guys who are supposed to be fighting also and they all fight.

Well, we elected them to fight for us and that’s what they do. This year I’m not going to vote for anyone who’s going to fight for me. I’m going to vote for someone who speaks for me…or maybe represents me? See, I don’t want my man/woman going up there with a chip on their shoulder. I want some common ground found. We get these political pit bulls so wound up over fighting why, they even fight the people in their own party!

Doesn’t matter which party…they all fight! Just look at those repugnant republican debates. At last count there were six fighters fighting each other for the right to fight for us. And what in the world were they fighting over? Do they oppose gay marriage? It depends on the votes. Are they conservative enough? It depends on the state and who’s voting.   And then there’s that question of when someone is born.

 

If you ask my wife she’ll say, February 24, 1986. It was five AM and her water broke. I’m lying there in a puddle and she rolls over and goes back to sleep. She says our daughter’s birth happened sometime after that but I’ve gone through at least six months of bloating, morning sickness and swollen feet so it must have happened sooner.

 

So they fight about the conception thing (I’m pretty sure I know when that happened) when the important thing is there’s another person on the planet for whom we are responsible and we’ve got the Chinese breathing down our throats with lead paint and toys that don’t make it through Christmas.

 

If our “leaders” worried as much about how death happens as they did about how or when life begins, we, the voters would probably be better off. We are just not picking our politicians’ fights very well.   Maybe it’s time we changed the climate by changing the language we use to send these “gladiators” to congress in the first place.  “I’ll represent you.” Sounds humane, like a person would be more willing to listen and not annihilate their fellow “gladiators” during a debate.  What we seem to have now are political termites eating away the fabric of our country who will say or do anything for a vote. You want to talk about throwing someone under a bus!? These guys invented it.

 

Where’s the leadership? The integrity?  The moral courage?  I guess they’re under the bus with the rest of us. I don’t know who I’ll vote for in the next election. I just wish it didn’t have to be someone fighting someone else for me. If you take your hand out of my pocket, I am perfectly capable of defending myself.