I’m allergic to commercial station talk shows and the “sky is falling” tone of TV news. I despise “off the cuff” opinions—including my own.
The Internet, bless its little heart, along with its great gifts, is home to rumor and untruth uglier than bubonic plague, all exponentially spreadable via the “forward” button.
And if you ever want to see what an IQ below zero looks like, check out the comments posted after any online Anchorage Daily News article.
A common result of being exposed to this flood of opinion is either to take a side and cover yourself with Teflon so that no opposing information can get through to confuse you, or else hang a permanent “gone fishing” on your political self and withdraw.
There are a lot of metaphors for the political process, all of them uncomplimentary. Mating skunks and what not. None of them describes the reluctant self-education, crow-eating, and improbable optimism which actually proceeds accomplishing anything.
So why spend time on this stuff and risk having to disgorge your own Extra Tuff?
Lacking the key to absolute truth, and abysmally short of ancestors who come to me in dreams or in the voting booth, I think of participating in our democracy less like choosing the Packers over the Vikings and more like a journey with Dorothy on the road to OZ.
You have a vague idea of what you want—the emerald city—or a gas pipeline—or affordable health care—or a balanced budget—or whatever. But it’s evil flying monkeys, Lions, Tigers, and Bears all the way.
At the end, there’s a guy pulling levers behind a curtain and then you don’t get exactly what you wanted in the way you wanted it, and you have to hop into a balloon filled with hot air to get home.
The dog is the big hero, of course, for tugging the curtain back to expose the charlatan guy at the levers. And the guy behind him. And the guy behind him.
In that story, you have to change your mind a lot about what is really happening and who is telling the truth.
You end up chewing on your own tail and dropping burning straw all over the place—not to mention freezing up because you’ve run out of oil.
And then there’s Dorothy—she’s a bona fide hero for going out in the storm to save her dog. She’s so brave she took a journey with a bunch of creatures even a Libertarian would regard as strange.
Bravo, Dorothy! I love that story.