America the Beautiful

...but seriously. This is Cheez-it brand cracker's homage to the original American big cheeses, or something like that. Coming to a city near you this summer, a 600-pound cheese replica of Mount Rushmore. My parents took us to see Mt. Rushmore when I was a kid. We must have spent a week in that god-awful station wagon to see it. I've been putting some effort into learning more about America's founding fathers. It's gratifying to learn that they were humans subject to much the same weakenesses as more modern politicians.

Politics just IS

Politics are not bad, nor are politics good. Politics simply is. One of my least favorite righteous arguments is the accusation that a person is 'politicizing' something that should be 'above' politics. That's bullshit. NOTHING is above politics. Human interaction requires political positioning and technique. All interaction is an exercise in power, however subtle it may be. We may naively wish things to be otherwise, but they are not.

Death, sex, religion, food, drink, love, hate, sickness, jurisprudence, music, sport, humor, art, business and any other form of the human experience involves political positioning when it is shared between two or more people. The simple act of speaking or putting pen to paper invites comparison with the views of others, and an attempt to frame one person's experience in the context of the experiences of others. This comparison and sharing of context is political.