I was just thinking about one of my conservative uncles and his habit of ranting at the dinner table, and I was getting frustrated just thinking about it. I haven’t seen him in years, although my mother has, and has stories to tell. Last night while waiting for pkg-ruby-extras to svn up on the laptop I was watching the 1/4/2010 episode of the Daily Show. The core news piece was the December terrorist attempt, and lots of clippings of republican legislatures, Fox newscasters and the such complain mostly about President Obama not calling this a “War on Terror” and whatnot, followed by clippings of the same people vehemently defend President Bush years ago when there were any implications that he wasn’t doing enough. Stewart goes on to ask what more they expect of Obama, and lists off many actions that should have satisfied them; additional troops sent to Afghanistan, delaying the closing of the detention center in Guantanamo, and such.

After all week of trying to get up before ten, but not really being able to sleep until five, I’m finally up at a reasonable hour. So I sit at the kitchen table with oatmeal and coffee, pondering the world. I got thinking about making arguments against these kinds of people, and what sort of research one would have to perform. It’s typically much more than they do, since you want concrete evidence and they’re satisfied with the implication of concrete evidence possibly existing. I was thinking about how I feel like national politics are so far removed from our daily lives and difficult to reach out to. I think that is why (corruption?) lobbying is more significant on a national level, it’s much harder to reach and be heard.

And then I realized the analogy that ranting about the President is really the equivalent of celebrity gossip.

I think that’s why I have little interest in discussion national politics. Maybe it is more that most that do are frustratingly inept at researching what they’re saying and instead are mostly spewing “news”. Maybe that is really the common thread too.