words.

a moment of clarity.

for your consideration...

"...That our political process was so easily reduced to a grotesque joke in the past year should tell us all something.

It showed that the people who run this country don't really care if we make a mess of our democratic rituals, provided we don't actually elect someone hostile to their interests.

Otherwise, mazel tov! So long as the population keeps going to work and spending money, nobody up there really cares what goes on.

If all this hatred and rancor were somehow suppressing consumption, if it caused people to stop cyber-shopping or buying crap in malls, there would be an immediate call for a national reconciliation movement.

But since all it's doing is splitting up families, undermining faith in public institutions, causing political gridlock and making Americans the laughingstock of the world, the powers that be just shrug.

Better to have us at each other's throats and making fools of ourselves than thinking about things that matter, like how wealth is divided up, who really has political influence or other such questions.

This election took 18 agonizing months to complete. It could have been done in five weeks.

The only people who benefited from it taking so long were media companies that depend upon making us miserable as a moneymaking strategy, and politicians who escape general scrutiny when the population is divided.

...But maybe our biggest problem is the political process itself. Our version of politics dehumanizes and demeans all of us.

Maybe next time, we should shut it off. Try to think about politics only when it intersects with our real lives. Take walks. Spend time with our kids. Something, anything, but not this. There has to be a better way than this."

ROLLING STONE: After This Election, Turn It Off