Playing too much defense

I've always been an apologist by nature. And during the Bush administration from 2000-2008 I spent a lot of time and effort defending W and the republicans. Of course I didn't endorse everything that they did, but the criticisms that came from the left were so ridiculous that I felt compelled to speak out against them. For example when we first invaded Afghanistan, in my small christian high school full of neo-cons, there was only one teacher that was outspoken against the war. His reasons basically applied to every war as they were the same reasons that he opposed the death penalty. So I supported the war all throughout high school and most of the way through college. I supported the Iraq war too. It was easy because the opposition was saying things like that they are a peaceful country, or that there were no weapons of mass destruction there (fyi we pulled out something like 700 tons of yellow cake uranium). By defending against arguments like this, I felt solidarity with the Republican party and the current administration. All the accusations such as saying that the president was stupid because he used the word evil, or that he was poisoning us by reversing Clinton's arsenic in water standards that had not been implemented yet, or any number of the other things that were so off the wall as to be literally insane only served to deepen my devotion. I started thinking that all criticism of W or of republicans in general was just coming from useful idiots.

It took $700,000,000,000 to shake me to my senses.

And now that I've stepped outside of the two party system, I can see that all those things that I was so concerned about before was nothing but theater. And the show goes on. I can hardly read any news or listen to any talk radio without hearing comments on the show. The latest big distraction is that the allegations against Herman Cain are fairly transparently false, as the women accusing him have a history of crying sexual abuse and also seem to be really enjoying their 15 min of fame. Why is this nothing more than a distraction? Because with the exception of Ron Paul and perhaps Michele Bachmann, all that this election is determining is who will get the prestigious roll of presiding over the transfer of wealth from tax payers to bankers and Wall Street investors.