Election Season Getting Uglier By the Day

Normally I don't relate my experiences at work in a direct way, and this article...while veering a bit in that direction...is still in the end faithful to this "rule".  The other day while there I went on my first break, in mid-afternoon, and as usual went to the main break room where there are plenty of seats, a television, and several vending machines.  The TV, sadly, was loudly showing the ongoing impeachment hearings and there was only one other individual in the room with me, somebody I didn't know.  At one of the vending machines he began to loudly talk to me about how the hearings were just going to hurt the Democrats and then followed me to where I sat...with my paperback sci-fi book...opened...while continuing his one-sided rant.  I clearly did not want to continue this fruitless conversation, partially because dammit this was my break and I wasn't going to let someone else run it, and partially because when folks get as emotionally stirred up about politics as this dude was it's a waste of time to try to respectfully share my own opinions on the subject.  Finally I flat-out told him that I didn't care about any of it and he angrily trudged off, repeating to himself..."doesn't care about any of it".  The fact is that I do care about politics and if circumstances were different and had I decided to share my opinion I would have told him that I had been following politics and elections ever since the 1968 presidential primary campaign and election and don't need some brainwashed fool repeating what he just heard some spin doctor say on his favorite TV or radio show.  I know the main candidates and why they won or lost in the 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential primaries and general elections, as well as the various times that the Senate and House of Representatives changed their majority parties.  With the current campaign I've already been weighing the different candidates according to factors like character, positions on the issues I care most about, and their general philosophies on government...and will then cast my single vote at the set time, first for the Florida Primary on March 17th and then for the 2010 general election on November 3rd.  In every single one of those years I just listed, I formulated my decisions early on about whom I supported during the primaries and then, once the eventual nominees became clear, whom I would support in November...1968 and 1972 happened before I was of voting age, though, with 1980 being the only election since then I missed out on voting in...

In light of that individual trying to harangue me at work with his unsolicited political comments, I expect the tone of political discourse to deteriorate to new lows as this already much-too-long campaign progresses.  I am a faithful and consistent voter and will from time to time make my personal opinions known on this blog...but I am not a campaigner, which is just as well because of the Hatch Act that prohibits partisan campaigning by employees where I work.  I WILL NOT allow myself to get caught up in all the negativity and vitriol surrounding current politics...I can't even stand watching late-night TV talk shows because most of the hosts seem to think it's a legitimate part of their show...especially that opening so-called "comedy" monologue...to insult and offend the other political side and its leader as much as possible. I already know what my voting choices are and, if my past history is any guide, am not at all likely to change my choice other than with "my" candidate dropping out of the race before the election.  So if you're one of those political zombies who get off on regurgitating their favorite media ideologue's talking points in other people's faces, you're wasting your breath going after me...