I've become obsessed with the Presidential race. It's the very reason you haven't seen a blog for about a month, and why it will be about two months before you see another one. Starting from the time I get to work, until the middle of the night, I scour online political blogs, newspapers, portals, and forums making comment upon comment upon comment, constantly challenging the other comments, engaging in democratic discourse, as our Founding Fathers intended. Politico.com, RealClearPolitics.com, HuffingtonPost.com, WSJ.com, NYTimes.com, DailyKos.com, Wonkette.Com, ABCNews.com, CNN.com, NationalRepublic.com, Time.com, Newsweek.com .... I'm consumed with the never-ending stream of political content. I can't think or write about anything else. It has gotten to the point where everyone on all of these sites recognize my name and ideology. We talk directly to one another. After posting a comment, I refresh my browser twenty times a minute until I get a response, the same way you would when waiting for an email telling you if you got a job, or if a girl you liked wrote back to you yet (in my case, she didn't).
I'll come right out and admit: I have an intense, overwhelming, irrational, knee-hurting, soul-scratching hatred for Hillary Clinton. How do I know it's irrational? Because I have the same intense, overwhelming, irrational, knee-hurting, soul-scratching hatred for many things: The New England Patriots, American Airlines, salmon, I-880, The Hills, all the characters on The Hills, any DVR that isn't TiVo, Jarlsberg cheese.... This is why so many of you have personally witnessed me throw a remote control or kick a trashcan at some point: Certain things cause me to get unmanageably angry. And when I see or read anything involving Hillary Clinton, a surge of disgust wells up in my chest, scurries to my brain, and then exits my mouth in the form of a scream. I am unable to contain the hatred, and must physically eject it from my body, lest it disease me. The way she randomly points at people she doesn't know in the crowd, her fake laugh, her utter inability to tell the truth or be respectable in any way, her self-absorbtion: It is simply too much for Mark Anderson to handle.
Why such strong and passionate emotions for something so seemingly outside of myself? Let me offer a thesis Carl Jung would be proud of:
In my lifelong attempt to find meaning in a morally confusing world (and to prevent my unrecoverable descent into cynicism), I assign significant value to meaningless symbols. Then, I take a fully-vested emotional interest in the battle between these symbols. The value I assign to these symbols reflects my earliest notions of the world; the battle between good and evil, God and Satan, the Ying and the Yang (Charlie Yang, that fat guy in my 6th grade P.E. class).The results of these daily battles either confirm or reject the notion that good does in fact triumph over evil.
To point: This past September, I decided that Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots were evil. I believed this with every cell of my body. I felt they represented all that is ruinous in our daily world: arrogance, smugness, a total lack of ethics, the ugly pink ties Robert Kraft wears. Satan might as well have been their defensive back, Adolf Eichmann their tight end, John Ashcroft their offensive coordinator. The San Diego Chargers, on the other hand, represented all that was good in the world: hard work, humility, fairness. Blessed by God himself (or herself, for the ladiez). This couldn't have been more clear to me. So when I watched these two opposing forces play each other in October, it was more than a game. It was a universal battle between good and evil. You can imagine my ... disappointment ... when it was proven that chilly night in October that evil is, in fact, stronger than good. (About 21 points stronger, to be exact.) It wasn't the Chargers who had lost, or the Patriots who had won. It was evil kicking the shit out of good. Hence, a remote control needed to be thrown to express my disappointment with that outcome.
Usually, these projections only last for a single game, or flight, or drive home. The problem is, this Presidential election has continued unbroken for almost three months, and will continue until November. So I am faced with this image of hate on an hourly basis. Also, the stakes are higher: The Chargers play football. The battle between Obama and Hillary is for the future of our country. Will good rule our country for 8 years? Or evil? Which will it be? Come on, America? WHICH WILL IT BE! GOOD OR EVIL! GOD OR SATAN! MAKE YOUR CHOICE!
This is how I feel.
Suffice to say, if America makes the wrong choice, I will retreat into my cage of cynicism for at least another eight years, maybe longer. Keeping true to an sfninja pledge, I will keep the specifics about my political ideology out of my blogs. If you care to know why I feel as I feel, I can assure you I have well-researched and thoughtful responses for you. Responses I share on the nation's comment boards to ensure the American public is educated on the truth. If you'd like to know more, you can reference my Obama page . As far as I can tell, my comments have not yet converted any demons to the light. However, I will not rest. I got over the Patriots winning. But Hillary? That will ruin me. And the country.
So, in the coming months, forgive my lack of blogs. It is simply America's ass I am busy saving.