Texas Vacation: Day 8 – Riverwalk
I’m sitting above the Riverwalk in San Antonio, sipping a Frappucino, watching a small flock of pigeons gathering at my wife’s feet and staring up at her muffin. These are Texas pigeons, which means they’re about two times the size of normal pigeons, and that they’re staunch supporters of George W Bush.
Actually, the easy generalizations don’t apply down here; they never do, but in this case they seem to apply even less than usual. There is a President George Bush Turnpike that I’ve been forced to drive down on several occasions, as well as large pro-life billboards littering the route down from Dallas to San Antonio, and stuff like that — but none of the in-your-face, bright red conservatism I was expecting to encounter.
In fact, if there is any lesson to be drawn from a vacation that has consisted chiefly of lounging, chatting, eating, and laughing, it’s this: politics are a blight on the soul, and have nothing important to contribute to your life. I used to think that politics were your innermost beliefs made manifest, but I was wrong. They’re informed by your beliefs, but they don’t really represent them, at least not for long; they’re too tainted by cynicism and corruption and the ambient shrillness of the chatterati to represent much of anything at all. What they can do, however, is serve as a kind of malign feedback mechanism that soils your actual opinions with dogmatism and bile. There’s no agreeing to disagree in this charged climate; you stake a position and cling to it as if your life depended on it, swatting down rational discussions and reasoned counter-arguments like some sort of ideological king kong, clutching the Faye Wray of your true beliefs in …
Ug. Ok. That’s enough of that. The point is, no political discussions have occurred during this past week, and I barely got worked up about any of W’s latest outrages. Which was nice.
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