The New Great Depression, or I'm So Broke I Can't Afford to Pay Attention, or The Real Me?

If you pay attention, you will be driven insane.

If you pay any amount of attention to politics, you will be driven insane.

If you give any serious thought to what politicians do or say, you will be driven insane.

If you pay attention to what politicians in you city or town or village, in your county, in your state, in our country, do you will have to look away, look away, because if you keep looking, if you keep paying attention, you will be driven insane.

And it’s not the good kind of crazy either, like the guys (other than McMurphy and the Chief) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who sit around all day in the nuthouse, smoking cigs, watching TV, taking meds and doing what they’re told. They like being nuts because it’s not a bad life for them.

No, the kind of crazy you get driven to by these politicians is not a happy kind of crazy, it’s an enraged, bitter type of daftness, marked by angry, red faced rants at the television, even if there’s no one around to view your spectacle. You know, kind of like Lou Dobbs, except your not getting paid to be pissed off.

If you pay attention to your local politicians and their excuses for raising your taxes even though they squandered the money they’ve already gotten from you, you will be driven insane. If you pay too much attention to weasels like Roland Burris, a petty little man who busies himself night and day with attempts to inflate his ego, you will be driven insane. If you pay attention to delusional frauds like Rod Blagojevich you will most assuredly be driven insane. If you pay close attention to the president, there are times when you may just be driven insane. If you look closely at the possibilities of where this country might be headed, you will...well, you get the idea.

But here’s the thing: I don’t want to be bats.

I don’t want to be insane. I don’t to be an Angry White Man. It’s so boring. And it’s exhausting. And it’s just not me.

But what to do?

Do I stop paying attention?

Cant’.

None of us can. No citizen of the United States should take his eyes off what's important.

But we can’t let ourselves be driven insane either, and that’s what I’m allowing to happen to me.

No longer.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, deep breathing yoga-type stuff perhaps, too old for drugs, my body can’t take too much alcohol. I could join a cult religion I suppose, but do I really want to be a snake handler? Snakes creep me out. Maybe I simply have got to get myself back to the garden. I just don’t know, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but the hate filled rants of the election cycle and the first 100 Days have got to go. I’m not a hater.

But who am I really? And just who are you?