Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Stop the political madness

I try to avoid writing about politics.

I don't like it, it causes unnecessary arguments, and no one is ever actually right, they just think they are.  Political discussions are often toxic to friendships, no matter how strong that friendship may be.

I don't pay attention to the debates, so I don't know what happened last night, or even in the first debate.  Guess what?  I don't care.  I don't need to watch two candidates argue on television to decide who I'm going to vote for.  I don't need their regurgitation of "facts" to sway me one way or another.  I don't need to wince every time one of them says something that's just asinine.

I already know who I'm voting for.

No, it's not Mitt Romney, who from this point forward will be known as "Mittens" (special thanks to a friend for that nickname).

Yes, I'm voting for Obama.

Is he perfect?  No.  Are there things that concern me?  Yes.  Every politician has things that frankly scare the crap out of me.  For me, he's the better choice.  Some spew numbers like they have the statistical flu, but I don't need to see numbers to see that some of what he wanted to do is working.  Spinning the numbers to make it look like employment issues have gotten worse is cute, as is spinning them the other way to make things seem better than they are.

The sad part about election time is it almost always comes down to the lesser of two evils.  Mittens scares me.  A lot.  He wants to undo a lot of things that others fought very hard to earn, such as the right to have an abortion and gay marriage.  I don't think abortions should be done left and right, but I believe circumstances warrant them, especially in rape/incest situations.  Mittens disagrees with this and doesn't seem to care about things like that.

But this post isn't to push for people to vote for Obama.  I could care less if you like Obama or Mittens.  Who you vote for is who you vote for.  I'm not going to spend half my day putting up posts celebrating the good Obama's done.  I'm not going to go and "educate" my Facebook friends on why they should vote for one guy or another.  I'm not going to post "truths" about one party or the other.

It's not my job.  It's not my place.  If someone disagrees with me, then so be it.  Don't go telling my how I'm wrong, or that you're trying to educate me about things.  I didn't ask for your help, I didn't ask you to give me "facts."  If there's one thing that aggravates me more than anything, it's people pushing beliefs upon others, whether it be religious or political.

Luckily, I haven't had to deal with it too much myself, but I've seen a few posts from friends complaining about all the political posts trying to convince people to vote for Obama or Mittens.  The few that have, I'm not seeing those posts thanks to the magic of filtering.

Look, I get that some of you are passionate about who you think should be running the country.  I respect that.  But when you start trying to convince everyone else to agree with how you see things, you aren't being helpful.  Respect the different opinions.  I'm not a Mittens fan, but if someone wants to tell me why they're voting for him, great.  Just don't tell me I'm stupid for disagreeing with your opinion.

I just get tired of it all. I get tired of hearing how bad Obama/Mittens is, how much they have destroyed or are going to destroy the country, how this guy will do better than the other guy.  I can do without all the extra campaigning that goes on this time of year.

I realize this is likely going to fall on deaf ears or cause one of the offenders to again pipe up with how they're just trying to inform people, but the truth is you're not informing, your pushing your point of view on to other people.  That's not helpful in the least.

So do us all a favor.  Stop posting 37 facts a day on the candidate/party of your choice.  Stop trying to push your choice onto everyone else.  Let people decide for themselves who they want to vote for.

Otherwise I'm going to flood your inbox with as much Obama propaganda as I can find.

Deal?

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