Wanted: Clever Title

(The hardest part of writing is the damn title, so I've given up changing it for today. One will come to me like 2 weeks from now I bet, unless someone else wants to name it for me! Anyway, on with the post...)

The way I see US politics, people usually fall into one of 5 categories (I'm sure there are more, but for the sake of this blog not taking me days to write, I'm gonna stick to these 5). Disciples, Intellectuals, Sheeple, Apathetics, and the Write-Ins. I'm sure most of us with a diverse friend base know people in each camp. People from every party fall inside these camps. There are Sheeple that will vote for Obama, there are Intellectuals who will vote for McCain. You will also run across articles, podcasts, videos, and blogs by people in all of these categories, isn't the internet great! *snort*

The Apathetic are the ones that either don't care about the election at all, hate politics, fail to see the reason for being politically active and voting, or they are so jaded about politics in general that they refuse to vote because they think it won't have any effect on the outcome. They may talk about The Man keeping them down, or they're too occupied with the latest episode of the OC to think about anything else. These are the people who won't vote. Unfortunately they make up a good portion of the population.

The Write-Ins are those whose candidate of choice either didn't get the mainstream nomination (Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, etc...), are a member of a 'non-mainstream' parties whose candidate will not be put on the ballot in some states (Libertarians, Greens, etc...), or they loathe all the people running so much that they'll write in their dog's name in protest. These people are politically active and will vote, just not for either of the main contenders.

The Intellectuals are those voters who make an effort to inform themselves of the candidates' positions on both sides. They're probably politically aware enough that they have opinions of their own and choose the candidate that is most in line with them, or they pick the lesser of two evils because they feel that while they don't fully agree with either side, one candidate would be more preferable than the other. They are likely to feel frustrated with people in the other categories for various reasons, a major one being that it seems the bulk of the population doesn't know how to use their brains anymore.

(One moment, fruit break, blogging uses up so much damn energy!)

The Sheeple. Everybody knows these. The Sheeple are those that vote with a party because their parents, pastor, best friend, or scary emails tell them to. They are the ones who think a salmonella outbreak from fresh tomatoes means they can't eat spaghetti and that we should ban all tomato products. One-issue voters often fall into either this category or are Disciples. The ones who think voting in Obama/Biden means all guns will be banned, or that voting in McCain/Palin will automatically ban abortion and 'stop the genocide of babies'. They will vote for a candidate because they look sexier in a suit, talk like the "average Joe Six Pack", are adorable, or are one specific race or gender. They refuse to talk politics most of the time because they really don't know much about the issues other than what MTV or Pat Robertson tell them, and they'll assume you're a Disciple for "the other side" if you try to engage them in logical conversation.

Last but not least, the Disciples. Disciples were at one time one of the other categories, but for whatever reason have taken the religion of politics to the extreme. There is no reasoning with them, they don't hear you, all they're thinking is how to "covert you" to their side. These aren't the people that will have a frank discussion with you about the flaws in both party's candidates, they believe their choice for President is in effect, the Messiah that will right everything that is wrong with this world and magically make the entire US into what they want it to be. Their eyes look just as glazed over as the Sheeple's do, in fact, many of them are Sheeple on steroids out to save your political soul!

Now that you're all hip with my lingo, I can ramble on in another blog about my mental musings these last few days.