idealism 12/18/2004

I thought I'd post an entry today... what the hell. I'll try to make it interesting, but most of my creative juices are going into scripts right now, so if you get bored, I strongly suggest you go read how Dangerspouse's spouse killed Santa Claus. You'll laugh a lot, I promise. It might even allow you to forgive me for boring you.

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Right. So, lately, I've been labeled an idealist by a few people. My mom in particular.

My mom and I can't really talk about politics or religion without getting into an argument. She's a highly religious fundamentalist Christian, and I am not.
(I guess I'd call myself a liberal deist if I needed to stamp a label of religion on my chest, which I don't think I need to do. Suffice to say, to my mom, hers is the only religion that matters.)
She is a staunch, Bush-supporting Republican. Anyone who has read this with any regularity knows I am not politically affiliated with any party.

So, yeah. We don't talk religion or politics. We argue it. And ultimately, she'll get exasperated enough to change the subject. But on a few occasions, she's admitted I raise a few good points, but it'd never happen because it's too idealistic.

idealistic: adhering to a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence.

My thoughts would never work because people would never adhere to those same standards.

This happens a lot. Someone gets a good idea, but no one follows through on it; they pass it off as idealism and continue living their lives the way they do.
But no one is arguing that these ideas are bad.

Like when I vote None of the Above in elections. My reasoning is that I think the whole idea of "Lesser of two evils" is a copout. Yeah, I think Bush is a horrible president, and yeah, maybe Kerry might have been slightly less horrible, but for chrissakes, do you really expect me to sacrifice my expectations for the leader of this country?
A lot of people thought I should. "You're just throwing your vote away doing that." Blah blah blah. I'm voting according to my conscience, and you tell me that's throwing my vote away? Fuck you.
I say that if people actually listened to their own standards a little more when they voted, the politicians would pay a little more attention to their constituents. I'm just one unhappy person. Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a record showing thousands or even millions of unhappy people?

But no. It's just idealistic. I understand people's reluctance to actually live according to their opinions, to their standards, but I'm pretty disappointed that people look down on me when I actually make the effort.

Maybe that's something y'all can try when 2005 begins.