Hello, Goodbye

This year's election cycle will end like a lot of good punk songs, abruptly. On November 3. Up until polls close on November 2, we'll be inundated with enough soft money hatchet jobs to put together the curriculum for a post-graduate dissertation on how to act like a jackass while stating half-truths and glaring distortions with a straight face. Then, when we wake up on November 3, it'll be right back to commercials for seven-pronged vibrating razor blades and truck ads.

Part of me is thrilled. I look forward, eagerly, to not having to listen to Rick Scott, the Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate, tout accountability with a straight face. This is the same man who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination a mere 75 times in a civil lawsuit. The same man who headed Columbia/HCA at the time it was incurring the largest fine for Medicare fraud in the country's history. This man wants to talk about accountability.

But then, I won't get to revel in the sheer idiocy of a candidate like Christine O'Donnell. If you're going to go around spouting off on the glories of the Constitution, you might want to read and actually attempt to understand the document first. O'Donnell apparently wasn't aware that the First Amendment contains the idea of the separation of church and state.

Oh. My. God.

Yes, the words "separation of church and state" don't actually appear in the First Amendment, but there's a subtle method of thinking called inference that most adults can and do use from time to time.

I'll also miss these "tea party" buffoons running around with their tricorn hats and Gadsden flags, waving copies of the Constitution like torches. It's funny to watch grown adults act like little kids who just found a prize, sporting shirts that label them "patriots" because, well, they've taken the time to read a document that officially sanctions slavery. It's funnier still to hear these people rail against government health care, as if they've been fighting their whole lives to overturn Medicare.

And I'll certainly miss the old campaign stalwart, the GOP candidate who looks earnestly into the camera and declares the need to cut taxes and, wait for it, eliminate government waste to balance the budget. Nevermind this flies in the face of all logic, it enables that candidate to make it sound as if everything will be fine if the National Endowment for the Arts is eliminated. Because, you know, that's such a large part of the budget.

Finally, we'll all miss every commercial that shows any candidate talking pointedly while surrounded by a small coterie of individuals. Or the commercials where kids are whored out for votes, and my personal favorite, the commercial that vows that that candidate is going to change the culture of Washington D.C. I can't believe nobody's ever tried that before.

Whatever the outcome on November 2, the country is screwed. There are simply too many stupid people in this country who vote. I'll miss the spectacle of seeing our national IQ dumbed down about 1,000 points, but I certainly look forward to the relative peace and quiet of rampant consumerism and the coming of Thanksgiving.

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