Politics! This will be a rarity, don't worry.

Weird experience last night.

I went to White Clay Drive (Jan's house) to watch the Vice Presidential debate with friends, after having assisted my family with the (now hopefully completed) car fiasco earlier in the evening. The debate was... interesting. The weird experience, though, came before I even got there. You'll see what I mean.

But first, a little about politics... If you've talked to me in the past month or so, you know that I hate Sarah Palin. Well, now I REALLY hate Sarah Palin.

Look, I don't like Biden, either. He moved to have Salvia divinorum made illegal in Delaware, thanks to that kid that supposedly killed himself after doing it (Brett Chidester). Newsflash with that one: I know someone that knew him, and apparently, though I'm digressing by even saying this much, salvia did not lead Brett Chidester to kill himself.

By saying this I'm not stepping aboard my "End The Drug War" soapbox, I'm just trying to prove a point. Biden is a politician, and therefore greedy, self-aggrandizing, and hypocritical, just like any other American politician. If he thinks something will advance his career, he'll vote for it, regardless of whether or not it's actually reasonable or helpful. That's the nature of politics. No democratically elected official is going to ride in on his or her white horse and save the public at the expense of his or her own career.

Which is why perhaps the only valid point Sarah Palin made last night was that Biden seems to have flip-flopped on the war issue. When the sentiment regarding invading Iraq was positive (or, at least as positive as it was ever going to get), Biden was all for the U.S. invading Iraq even if it had to do so itself. Now, the official Barack Obama page claims he and Joe Biden are "fully committed to ending the war on Iraq".

So essentially, he's not to be trusted. But why, then, do I find him more palatable than Sarah Palin?

Because what we're dealing with as far as Biden goes is simple, unadulterated greed. Greed can be reasoned with. I realize this is a naive and idealistic notion, but there is the chance, slight though it may be, that if we as a society manage to convince people like him that the war in Iraq is economically (or possibly even just politically) unsound, they just might listen. Again, the odds against this happening are astronomical, given the vast amounts of money that change hands during wartime, as well as the ignorance of the vast unquestioning flag-waving hordes out there, but theoretically it is possible.

Sarah Palin, though? We're not dealing with reason here. I'm sure part of the reason she's running for VP is the morally questionable, but still understandable lust for wealth and status... but I don't think it's the entire reason. She's on a crusade. Unlike Biden, her support for the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the way the political winds are blowing. She really believes in it.

And what frightens me to no end is that the reason she believes in it is because of her religion. She wants to continue good old Dubya's crusade against the Middle East so that we can keep Israel safe. And if Bush is any indication, her motives for doing so have nothing to do with protecting innocent Israeli civilians from harm and everything to do with a lot of ancient bullshit about rebuilding the Temple of Solomon so that Armageddon can take place.

It isn't at all that I'm out for the destruction of Israel, by any means. I have a ton of Jewish friends, and it's rumored among my family that I may have some degree of Jewish background. Israel, on it's own, is not the problem. The problem is the boorish and hopelessly barbaric policies our nation espouses regarding the protection of Israel. We do nothing diplomatically over there, and on the rare occasions we do, it's from the standpoint of the Paternalistic White Man giving the shining apple of reason to the dirty brown Arabs. The entire situation over there is mindblowingly complex, and will never be solved with brute force and/or imperialistic attitudes.

Like I said, Biden will support bills and policies that may well be backwards, unjust, and oppressive if he thinks it will advance him politically. But again, this means he can be swayed, even if only theoretically, if it can be shown that such bills and policies are, in fact, not advantageous to support.

I said, earlier, that there are no "knights in shining armor" politically. Well, perhaps I was a bit mistaken. Sarah Palin may well be one. But she's not going to scoop you up out of the arms of danger, put you on her white horse, and ride you to her beautiful castle in some idyllic realm of peace, where you'll live happily ever after. No, she's out to bring us all back to a world where men are burly, jocular hunters, women are barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and men, women and children alike literally fear their vengeful, terrible god. She's a knight, all right, straight out of the Middle Ages.

Honestly, I don't care what people choose to believe in. I have my beliefs, you have yours. As long as your beliefs don't affect my life, I don't care if you believe God is a giant hamburger and that when we die we all become his condiments.

I do care, however, when religion plays a role in policy, with my main griping point being the war in Iraq, or in general, really. You want to send our troops to war to keep us safe? Fine. That's their job, when you think about it. (Whether or not our conquest of Iraq ever had anything to do with national security is another issue I won't discuss here, but the reasoning, at least, is sound.) But don't you dare send people's husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, and friends to war for your personal beliefs. There's really only two degrees of separation, at best, between those of us here in the States and the military over in Iraq or Afghanistan. You either have friends or family members over there, or you know someone who does.

I hated Sarah Palin even more last night after I saw her simpering face smirking at Biden's admittedly repetitious and woefully out-of-touch attempts at defending his position. It was the arrogance I saw in her, really, that did it for me. The fact that some soccer- oops, excuse me: HOCKEY- mom, operating based on Cretaceous-era beliefs, can not only directly affect the lives of millions of people worldwide, but can also feel very secure about her right to do so, is absolutely insane. The fact that said hockey mom may have a hand in our friends and family members not coming back from Iraq for another few years is monstrous.

And the fact that the Cretaceous-era beliefs she holds, which have at least an influence on her rabid support for our administration's tragically flawed policies on Israel, may in fact be the ticket to getting her elected thanks to the shockingly high number of people who also share such prehistoric notions, is horribly disheartening.

I don't want to register as a Democrat, because I'm absolutely not one. I'm a hard-line anarcho-libertarian, thankyouverymuch. But I'm tempted to vote for the Democratic side, just this once, just to make sure I can look back on things and say "Well, McCain and Palin still won, kids, which is why you're wearing loincloths and we have to rummage through a lot of radioactive waste every day to find dinner, but I didn't vote for 'em."

Because I think this election is somehow important, and this has to do with the "weird experience" I mentioned earlier. I went to the liquor store to buy my current liquor fad product (Mike's Hard Lemonade), and the clerks were watching the debate. I made an instant friend just by talking about how I hated Palin. I walked down North College on my way to White Clay Drive, and you could see the debate being watched inside people's houses and apartments.

I'm generally pretty proud of my absolute disconnect with pop culture. My sister gets some celebrity magazine; I have no idea who the people are in it. I don't watch TV, and I haven't voluntarily turned on the radio in years. My point here is that it's very rare for me to be involved in something that the majority of people are also involved with, and it gave me a really eerie feeling.

People are fed up with all the lies and corruption. The battle lines seem to be forming, between those who would rocket everything back to some nightmarish 1950's Leave It To Beaver scenario (with guns and far more degradation of women, of course), and those who, regardless of how much we may blunder everything, do have at least some desire to improve things.

The Chinese had a curse: "may you live in interesting times". It's too soon to tell if it really is a curse or a blessing, but it's quite a ride, thus far.