the moral disconnect

i know that it’s not that simple for most people, and that many people don’t understand the full repurcussions of what they are voting for, but i thought it captured the idea pretty nicely.

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sometimes, i wonder if people are just naïve… perhaps the average person does not understand what the role of the president is? i don’t mean to excuse people who don’t understand; i just want to first try to figure out what is going on with them. i remember that as a child, i thought of the president as sort of a king that gets to have that position via a popularity contest, like you had the be the “best person” or “most well-liked person” to be prez, then you’d rule over your kingdom. and at a slightly later part of my childhood, i thought the president was the representative of your country to the world, but i didn’t give a thought to the actual practical governing aspects of things. i wonder if there is a significant bulk of people who vote in this country that believes that (1) the president is just your country’s spokesmodel; (2) that bush is a “good person”; and (3) that they want a “good person” to represent us. i have no idea. i mean (1) is sheer ignorance in the literal sense, (2) is due to either reception of purposeful misinformation or perhaps some sort of a cognitive dissonance due to preconceived notions of the man, and (3) is… actually kind of child-like and sweet, except that this isn’t the president of your grade school classroom, and (1) & (2) are so totally wrong!

hrm. i’m going to say that there can’t be that many people that fell under this umbrella. i was just trying to figure out a way to preserve my ideological belief that in general people aren’t inherently evil and aren’t voting to oppress others, but perhaps it is i that is suffering from cognitive dissonance, as there seems to be plenty of evidence to the contrary. that makes me very sad.

taxing interest, waning weight

another book i’m interested in getting from amazon is Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston. i heard him talk on air america radio this morning.

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i think i’m losing some fat! and i think it has to do with seppo’s wonderful, home-cooked meals. mmmmm mmmmm good. man, going home is so great when you have a great guy with tasty food and a crazy cute dog to greet you. 🙂 yay! i love seppo’s vacation more than he loves it, i think. last night, he made fried chicken and sweet potatoes. man oh man was it great. tonight, i think he’s going for ribs. *drool*