Relax. It's Just a Game.

 Things in the states, you might notice, are getting increasingly electioney.

 Likeable but disappointing Al Green impersonator Barack Obama is being pitted against right-wing religious nutjob and glove-named fascist Mitt Romney.

 Clearly, if you’re in favour of Obama, you’re a pussy and a communist and probably too busy burning the American flag at a Taliban sponsored gay wedding to even read this.

 Romney supporters, meanwhile, can only read this after dark, as they must sleep during daylight hours before they descend, nightly, upon the neighbourhoods of the poor to drink their blood for sustenance and force them to have babies they don’t want.

 It really is a bunch of horseshit.

 What’s worrying, when you look at American politics, isn’t the hopelessly divided nature of the playing field, but the fact that the divide is achieved, widened, and reinforced through such childish means.

 Somehow, politics in the states has turned into professional wrestling, with each side seeing their opponents as pantomime evildoers to be booed and heckled and, if possible, hit with chairs while the referee isn’t looking.

 In reality, I don’t think 99% of people anywhere in the world could have views as far-out as either party is caricatured as having. Most people, if asked honestly, would admit to having a mixture of views. I’m pro-choice and pro-death penalty; I’m in favour of subsidised healthcare for the poor, but as fearful of society becoming a forcibly levelled, “Harrison Bergeron” hellhole as it’s possible to get.

 So it’s fair to say that personally, I’d be in the “Other” column in most surveys. I’m sure you would, too.

 Somehow, everyone forgets this when it comes to American party politics and goes clownshit insane, joining in a vitriolic orgy of stereotyping and hatred.

 And it’s all for nothing, because elections don’t really solve jack shit in the modern world.

 Call me cynical by all means, but the person elected to run a country has no say in the big issues, unless their financial backers okay it first.

 Take a clear-cut example like Al Gore. Good old Al, he’s an upstanding environmental hero, determined to save every one of us, like a flabby, power-point wielding Flash Gordon. Everyone knows Al Gore and the environment are BFFs, and it’s commendable.

 Al Gore is always trying to do something about climate change, and has been on that mission ever since the late seventies. The only time he didn’t really try to do much about the whole global warming/apocalypse thing was during that eight year period when he was the second most powerful man in the world.

 Why? ‘Cause there’s no money in doing the right thing or acting on your principles. Parties have been bought and paid for for decades, and businesses don’t want to cut emissions, so that’s not going to happen. Al Gore is anything but a lone example, I just picked him because he’s the least objectionable person to spring to mind.

 Huge corporations are funding politics, and they’re going to get what they want because of it, regardless of what anyone else says. The sad thing is that whilst they pit political puppets against each other to get everyone good and riled up about issues like church and state, nobody is paying any attention to the separation of state and industry.

 Until powerful, multinational corporations stop buying election campaigns, there’s no real point in voting for anyone, from what I can see. It’s all a sham, propped up with caricature and dogma.

 But, again: I’m cynical.