Work’s been slow, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the past two days surfing blogs. There seem to be two kinds. The first kind is mostly links. Links to funny stuff, weird stuff, time-wasting stuff, political stuff, or links to more links to stuff. The other kind seems to be deeply personal and somewhat put-offish: long, drawn-out posts about being fat or depressed or discovering you’re fucked up because your dad was an asshole.

I have no idea where goblinbox falls. I guess I’ve got a fair showing of both kinds of posts.

I’m not terribly political – thank the gods – so most political blogs bore me. Politics, to me, are just glorified playground games, being played with bigger toys. One memory that was painful for years: I was in third grade. I ran with a group of three girls. One of them – I don’t remember why – decided she no longer liked me, and convinced the other two not to play with me any more. The recess bell rang, and I was detained by a teacher I think. When free I ran late from the building all the way out to the back soccer field… and one of the girls told me that they were no longer my friends. And she told me, cruelly, to go away. So I did. I walked back to the toys near the building and put myself on a swing for the rest of recess, and I was shattered. Heartbroken. I no longer had any friends.

This is how little girls are. They’re mean little politicians. Fortunately, all they have to play with is other little kids, and their scheming is harmless in the sense that all they can damage are feelings. Grown men, on the other hand, play real games with real money and real weapons and real lives – but the motivations are the same. So, I don’t particularly care for politics. All I see are conflicting ‘belief’ systems, posturing, ego, hatred, ego, and petty decisions based on not much more than “we don’t like you any more, so you can’t play soccer with us at recess.”

While I realize these people can and will make decisions that affect my life, I find myself thinking that the less attention I pay the less real the game is. But I read a blog entry today by a soldier who answered the question, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” His answer was this: he was on a reaction team in Cuba. Orders were not to let any refugees through. A group of refugees approached, having safely navigated a minefield to get that far. The soldiers, following orders, turned them back. The refugees didn’t follow their own safe path back through the minefield: they deliberately stepped away from their own footsteps in the sand, and blew themselves up rather than go back into Cuba.

This is the world that politics made.
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