If you're looking for good spontaneous conversation, ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE MAN WITH THE TOOTHPICK. He's a conversationalist. You will know his interest in your conversation was reciprocated if, at the end of the conversation, he tosses away the toothpick. If he THROWS the toothpick and says, "aw, to HELL with you" while he walks away then it means you've found a debate partner for life.

I say all this after we walked home from our precinct caucus yesterday and had the best roadside political conversation with a guy with a toothpick and silver braid, wearing a Carhartt jacket over a Harley t-shirt. He stopped us as he got out of his pickup to ask what the caucus was like.

It was interesting. It's only the second time we've attended one, but today's was MUCH more exciting since there seemed to be more Democrats with some fucking common sense (last time the hyper-idealistic simpletons all threw their shit away on Kucinich; those folks were still there yesterday, I kid you not, providing the dictionary illustration for the word "futility"). Judging from what we saw in our precinct and the one next to us, Obama had a huge lead over Clinton in our town (and of course the entire state of Washington).

Both Delia and I felt sad that now that we HAVE to vote by mail, the caucus is really our only opportunity to gather together with other voters en masse to publicly participate in the process. Oh, I know there are other opportunities to get together and be all civic-minded, but those are usually just a handful of people with very specific interests. It's just not the same and now they're trying to get rid of THIS, too, and simplify things with a regular primary. I know voting by mail is cool because it's so easy and convenient (and a way to avoid the nightmare of electronic voting machines), it's just sad that we lose the sense of doing it socially as a community, and in some cases as a nation. Voting seems like even more of a farce by mail. It leaves me feeling disenfranchised as a citizen. It's like using the free address labels The March of Dimes sends you without bothering to send them a donation. If I don't have to leave my house and mill around with strangers in a location I would never otherwise visit I might as well be voting for American Idol; devoid of the common ritual, the process feels trivialized. Actually, voting for American Idol probably feels LESS trivial because at least people have a limited window of time to cast their votes (so are voting TOGETHER) and enjoying the ritual of tuning in next time to see the results.

All we have left is going to see fireworks together or sports in a stadium, and that's just not the same because we attend games and fireworks displays and concerts as observers, not participants. I suppose we still have rallies and parades and protests to participate in, but that's almost TOO much participation. Besides, for all of the work people put into it, there's no official record of what you've done unless you get arrested or win a trophy and nobody in the general population cares about the outcome regardless. I would say at least we still have the pledge of allegiance and singing the national anthem together, but nobody except conservative automatons seem to appreciate the bliss of joining into rituals of mass brainwashing the way I do. Oh well. I suppose there's always traffic court.

Since socializing is not a high priority for me and I tend to enjoy it more in structured environments, losing the opportunity to vote the old-fashioned way is a pretty big blow to my human experience. I loved sitting in the bleachers yesterday with strangers chuckling and criticizing our disorganized party, laughing as they moved their lips unintelligibly with their predictable head-in-the-clouds lack of awareness that nobody could hear their brainy soft-spoken voices while the rest of us in our typical passive Democratic style failed to speak up and point out that WE COULDN'T HEAR THEM. If we'd been Republicans, someone would have immediately stood up and cupped her hand around her ear or made the "up! up!" motion or screamed, "LOUDER!" Those gentle hippies, our brethren. How I wished we could import some of the audible obnoxiousness of our enemies, the loud-mouthed Republicans who know how to ORGANIZE an event and properly strategize.

At some point I realized it might be easy to become a delegate to the county convention, so we stuck around for me to push through the small cluster of other hopefuls and sign up to go. I felt a little cheated that it was all left up to chance (whichever people grabbed a paper and signed up first are going, apparently) instead of competition. I imagined if I were a Republican I would have had to FIGHT with some fat-ass in a red sweatshirt to EARN my spot. That would have been more fun. Perhaps the competition will be stiffer to move from county to the district caucus, though.

I am picking out outfits now, plotting an escalation of attractiveness to try to get to the state convention. If my sordid porn career prevents moving that far along I can console myself with the knowledge that at least I won't have to go to Spokane in August June, which is a nasty hellhole.

Labels: Barack Obama, confessions, goals, neighbors, politics, relationships, ritual, sociopolitical commentary, values

posted by Trixie at 2/10/2008 02:38:00 PM -