Normally I don't care about politics except to throw out the occasional cynical comment or two. I've been cynical since 1973, when they replaced a whole summer's worth of Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo with the Watergate hearings. There's nothing like listening to endless testimony from Ehrlichman and Mitchell-- when you were expecting Mr. Green Jeans and Mr. Moose-- to make a kid cynical.

I soon figured out what all these world leaders were after was power and/or money. In my arrested 5-year-old view, politicians want power over 'the masses', to bend them to their will, to control their thoughts to some degree. You can see this on a small scale in any family, any playground in America. So an election, to me, is about selecting the power-hungry guy whose views happen to most closely align with yours. It never feels good because you can never be totally aligned with your 'leaders' and you have to constantly resist their attempts to morph your thinking into their thinking...wrap your head in tin foil if you have too.

However, a post by Evilwhiteguy, pointing out Kerry's asinine statement about running a 'more sensitive war on terror' brought up some suppressed memories of my time in the Army. I had intentionally blanked out those memories-- from the time I got off the bus at Basic Training to that glorious last day four years later when, during the exit process, some scumbag stole the clothes out of my suitcase-- but this 'sensitive war' thing brought back memories of my tour in West Germany.

I was in Germany, West Germany then, for 3 years-- around the time when the Red Brigade and other terrorist cells were sporadically car bombing US bases in Europe. I don't really care why they were targeting us; it's all the same isn't it? Some little guy feels powerless so he lashes out any way he can. Ultimately, the little guy wants to be a big guy and have some kind of power, some kind of control. Never, it seems, is any terrorist fighting for the freedom of individuals to make their own choices.