Has anyone noticed a motif in the topics of conversation lately? Politics: It’s all people talk about these days. Everything is “the Bush administration this” or “the war that.” Does anyone remember when we had more to talk about than just the issues that were voted on almost a year ago? It is a point of constant intrigue for me.
To support this theory, I actually went out and asked people what one issue they had a strong opinion on. The answers I got were superficially varied to an extent, but they all came back to politics one way or another. A good example of this was a friend who had a strong opinion about gas prices. This was certainly an issue worth exploring; however, after he explained his opinion a little more he found a way to blame the entire problem on George Bush and the current administration. Politics finds its way into yet another facet of our daily conversational topics.
What really had me gripped with interest were the rare moments when I passed by high-school-aged kids, or younger, locked in heated debates about who should have been elected and why. What made it more fascinating was how invested in the conversation they were. A simple debate quickly escalated to dramatic proportions before managing to elude any kind of resolution. I had to suppress a slight chortle at the irony regarding how worked up these kids could get when they aren’t even old enough to vote. They were treating the conflict as though it were a life and death matter, yet they are really, more or less, powerless to do anything about it. Talk about setting yourself up for a fall. If this zeal and vigor holds out, perhaps the number of voters in the next election will
be larger.
Thinking back on my own middle-school and high-school years (something I try to do as little as possible), I can recall this trend. I can remember being surrounded by arguments regarding ballot measures that would affect the outcome of lives, elections that would determine people’s sanity and other such paramount issues. In my youthful naÃ