Feed The Machine

I woke with a start: Two weeks until the election. The presidential election. The neck and neck, nip and tuck, down to the wire presidential election. You may have heard something about it. For the past year or two. This is the one that's going to decide everything for always. Until the next election cycle. The one that's going to start sometime around November seventh.
I have a friend who has suggested that it could be considered treasonous the way our two party system allows, nay encourages, one side to begin antagonizing the other at the moment that a candidate has assumed office. Blocking legislation, filibustering, and just plain poor sportsmanship. I consider this entertainment for our generation. The twenty-four hour new channels feed and grow off of it. Political action committees, super and not so, thrive because of it. Electioneering is big business. I know because people keep calling and asking me to donate more of my money to what is already a multibillion dollar industry.
So here's what I imagined: Maybe all of this campaigning isn't real at all. Just like that so-called "moon landing," this is all just theater for the masses. The story lines have already been scripted and predetermined, they are now being played out before the cameras in hopes of kicking loose those leftover dollars that are still sitting on the dresser, stimulating a moribund economy that needs a race to the very finish to keep the cash flowing. That whole recount business back in 2000? Quite the spectacle, right? It got massive numbers, even before Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary made the HBO version. John Kerry? Doesn't he remind you a little of another out-of-touch-with-the-common-man candidate from this year? Don't they even bother to write new scenarios? At least they switched the party on this one.
Or maybe it is all for real. All of this bitter rhetoric. All this anger and frustration. This is part of the Democratic process. Maybe the news channels will just report what they see, without someone behind the scenes pulling the strings. I'm going to go ahead and vote anyway. Just in case the whole thing isn't some crazy dream.