Yesterday evening I cracked open a beer, put on The Grateful Dead’s album Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel (“U.S. Blues” indeed…), donned a pair of studio headphones to drown out all distractions and got down to filling out my absentee ballot for this year’s midterm elections.

I don’t know about you, but I’m having serious difficulties voting for either of the leading candidates for California Mayor, and found myself siding with the libertarian this go-around. I can’t trust somebody who spends $140 millions dollars on a campaign (money shouldn’t matter…can we equalize the playing field for everyone here?), has a long history of not voting, and says one thing to a certain group of people then completely contradicts herself when speaking to another group. I also don’t get the warm fuzzies when a 70′s relic refuses to speak on the issues on the radio, backtracks on statements, plays dirty politics, and who didn’t do a stellar job for California the first time around.
We Californians are doomed.
In fact, I find it difficult to trust any politician nowadays. What I really, really want is a politician who doesn’t want to be a politician. I want somebody in office who doesn’t have a self-serving agenda. Somebody who believes in transparency. Somebody who isn’t in the game for money or power. Somebody who has, first and foremost, the people in mind.
But that’s also part of the problem, isn’t it? The people. We keep voting for incompetency. Until we’re able to get our own stuff together we’ll never see true change. Until we stop voting for sound bites and power suits and empty promises, we’ll continue on down the muddy rutted road that we currently find ourselves mired in.
Until such time when I can trust the people we place into power, when we have people who are not beholding to special interests, partisan politics, career fast tracking, rubber stamping, pork spending and back room deals calling the shots, then please continue to describe me as a vocal doubter and dissatisfied voter. You can rest assured that there are more of us out there than you’d care to believe, and we have our eyes on you…