I stopped by a blog I used to read all the time, but had stopped visiting awhile ago. Funny thing is that although it was a sudden break, there wasn’t anything negative about it. I got extremely busy and fell behind on my blog and comment reading, went to catch up, saw how many new comments had been made since my last visit and pretty much said, “I don’t have time for this,” and that was that.

I’ve dropped by a couple of times, but mostly just to glance around, so today I wandered over, read a few posts, and perused the comments.

What struck me was how polarized things had become in the past year.

To be honest, I stopped paying attention to politics quite awhile ago. I still avidly listen to the news, but have avoided political blogs and posts almost completely.

Why? Because all reading about politics was doing was making me extremely upset over a situation about which I can do nothing. No matter how much we wail and gnash our teeth, GWB is not going to be impeached and indicted. Fulminating about the whys and wherefores will change nothing.

No matter how much crying and screaming go on, our presidential and vice-presidential candidates are who they are, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

What I want to see is a discussion of the issues and policies the candidates will take. I want to know who their advisers will be–and more importantly–whether they will actually be advised by their cabinet.

Please note: advising does not mean blindly taking the advice one a handful of insiders. It means listening to differing points of view, considering all the options, and then determining the best choice. I want someone who will behave like Lincoln in selecting their cabinet members, listening to the opinions of their advisers, and then taking the burden of decision making upon themselves.

What I found was rumor and innuendo and personal attack. None of which are helpful, and none of which solve anything.

Why aren’t they helpful? Because at some point a blog reaches a critical mass and commenters with opposing views are silenced–not by the hosts, but by the sheer volume of those who believe strongly in one side of the issue and have becoming unwilling to hear whisper of something that does not fit their world view.

And I have to admit that to some degree this makes sense. The last seven and a half years have been a disaster, and if someone were to try to tell me they weren’t I’d think them a raving lunatic who had completely lost touch with reality. And at some point, the past and the future become intermingled. McCain has Bush cooties, and there’s little he can do at this point to brush them off. For better or worse, his support of Bush over his presidency has rightly or wrongly linked the two.

So what we have now are people who are projecting the ideas and motivations of Bush onto McCain. And from there they project the stupidity of the Bush administration onto McCain.

And the speculation about Palin is even worse.

Let’s face it, we can speculate as much as we want, but theorizing about McCain’s health and whether Palin has personality disorders achieves nothing except a general frothiness at the mouth that makes one coming upon you all unexpectedly want to back away in fear it really is rabies and the frothier is going to bite as soon as you turn your back.

Don’t get me wrong. There is no way in hell I’m voting for McCain. I’m a life long liberal and I really like Obama. But this polarization has achieved nothing other than making it harder than ever to get anything done, and the demonization of those who are willing to compromise to get things done.

So no, I won’t be perusing much other than my limited corner of the blogosphere until the election is over.

Then I can do little but hope that this will remain calm for the next three–or at least two–years.