dear politics,

I’ll say that its only in the last ~20 years that we’ve devolved into this. Politics is now the average American’s favorite sport. The only thing funnier to me than partisan hacks, are the partisans who think they can change another partisan’s mind.

While it probably started in earnest years before– in the 21st century, America’s political system converted 100% into a professional sport. We support “our” candidate with the same glee and ardor that we “cheer” for our favorite sports teams. Do you think you could ever convince a Yankees fan to cheer for the Mets? Do you think you could get me (a tortured Mets fan) to ever become a Yankees fan? I’m thinking snow in hell and all that. What makes this tragic of course, and all the more of an accurate analogy, is that our continued support is based in nothing more than tradition, loyalty, and irrationality. Think about it– in baseball, do you really *hate* the opposing team’s pitcher? What if he switched team jerseys next season? Seinfeld had it right that at some point we stopped cheering for team, and we started cheering for uniforms. Well, I guess you could say we stopped supporting issues and principles and we started supporting little letters in parentheses after names ie. Barack Obama (D). When did the parentheses become more important than what came before it? When did the label become more important than what it stood for?

The parallel goes further. The impact of money to MLB, NFL, NBA, etc is huge in the past few decades. Look at how money has almost completely conquered sports, and you’ll see that in politics we’ve created a system in which money has totally taken over. Hundred million dollar players and hundred million dollar candidates.

The idiocy of this drives me to the point of explosion. Realistically, what are the chances of someone listing out their views on a host of issues and having them link up perfectly with any one candidate or party? Yet most people have a fervent adoration and support for “their guy” and almost unconditionally defend all of their positions. And this is killing America.

Our nation had the largest bank failure in its history today. And, given recent events, no one even flinched. That’s how bad things are. This is a crisis. Make no mistake, what got us into this is the politics of big money and partisanship. And that’s clearly not changed, and shows no sign of changing. So, to each of you, partisan hacks, who I meet more and more of every day– i just want to tell you one thing:

I hate you all.

love, surya