Now I don't want to get off on a rant, here, but where else but in politics can you see so many supposedly grown-up people acting so silly?

We just finished having our prime-time shows preempted by the Democratic convention. The party that never met a social program they didn't like is now pushing welfare reform and smaller government, and doing it in a coordinated, unified approach. Democrats coordinated? This is the party that gets in a circle to form a firing squad. Getting Democrats to agree on something is like trying to herd cats.

Of course their unity was mitigated by even more scandal, but what's new? There's a report that the Secret Service was trying to get Bill Clinton to wear bulletproof shoes. But as it turns out, his repeated shootings in the foot have developed so much scar tissue that the bullets just bounce off.

Hmm, with 2 out of my last 3 metaphors involving shooting, no wonder the Democrats favor gun control.

Clinton tries to be all things to all people and he's actually accomplished it half-way. The liberals think he's a turn-coat conservative, the conservatives think he's a flaming liberal, and the moderates think he's an extremest conservative liberal (which is a pretty good trick!)

It was kind of exciting knowing the Democrats were going to have their convention in Chicago, home of the '68 riots, but in '96 only a small number of the available protest sites were politely registered. Can you imagine protesters in 1968 actually signing up for a booth to protest?

But this is the new Chicago for the 90's. A kinder, gentler Chicago. Clean and manicured (at least near the convention site) with a multi-million dollar facelift. Everyone was talking about the changes. I hear they even changed the signs leading into the city to "The Village of Chicago."

Just a little bit earlier we had the Republican convention. If you take a look at their supposed principles, it sounds pretty good: less government, less regulation, less taxation and personal responsibility. Of course, that's just the picture on the box. Reality is the some-assembly-required-2,000-pieces-of-balsa-wood-batteries-not-included-model government-for-ages-3-to-5.

Sometimes they take a stab at it. They do think in terms of less government, but when they tried to get rid of some of it, they thought... Hey! why just throw this away when we might get a good price for it. Next thing you know they had sold themselves at a yard sale.

They got a bit of a rude awakening when one of their new owners (the tobacco industry) actually passed out their paychecks on the floor of the House recently. I bet a number of them wished they had opted for direct deposit.

The Republicans are also hampered with their unholy alliance with the anti-Christ made manifest in the trinity of Pat, Pat, and Ralph (Buchanan, Robertson and Reed). Since they want more government (at least in the bedroom), it may seem odd that they went to the Republicans, but maybe they thought they could purchase a piece of the government for themselves, so they could promote their version of family values where the family consists of one father of the male gender, one mother of the female gender, as many children as the number of times they've had sex, one government official, and, to demonstrate tolerance, one minority housekeeper.

Now this radical right group calls themselves Christians. As a minister's kid, I had the opportunity to read the New Testament a number of times, including the stories of that guy from Gallilee, and I thought he was pretty cool, and I liked what he had to say, but in all my reading, I never saw anything there that supported many of the views of the Christian Right. After all, Christ was the kind of guy who hung out with prostitutes (not in the same way Jerry Falwell did), and People with Aids (OK, so it was lepers back then), and railed against the self-rightous people who ran the church and tried to put religion into government. Hmmm...

So I don't see how the Christian Right can be called Christian -- unless maybe it's one of those things where you have a different meaning of the same word, like the fact that New Yorkers call that thin piece of cardboard with grease running off of it "pizza" or that the fake entertainment on pay-per-view is called "wrestling."

Or, as Mandy Patinkin said to Wallace Shawn in "The Princess Bride," "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

But I digress...

Republicans are also known for some of the wackiest fringe elements since Reverend Jim and Louie DePalma. What could top the antics of a Jesse Helms, for example. Or Bob Dornan, who actually ran for President. It's scary to know that he's even on the same planet as atomic weapons. He's a hawk who could make me believe in spontaneous nuclear conflagration.

But the latest Republican insanity is the new economic proposal.

Now I thought theatre majors were bad with it comes to math. I've seen some of them grasp their head like it was going to explode just from being confronted by the addition of multiple digits.

I don't know what the Republicans were doing during Math for Dummies class, but a 15% tax cut, plus balancing the budget, increasing spending for defense and not cutting social security and medicare? Oh, the voodoo that they do so well!

Of course, you know why they say they won't cut social security? Old people are the only ones who actually vote! Maybe this practicality helps explain why your financial aid and student loans are in constant danger of being cut? Or do I have to paint a fucking picture?

The Republicans seem to think that they can balance the budget if they can just get rid of that damned National Endowment for the Arts, even though the entire humanities budget would only pay for one foot of one of the submarines that the pentagon doesn't want but congress approved anyway.

In fact, the NEA has already been cut so much that you could probably include its entire budget as a rider to the maintenance agreement for congressional document shredders.

There is a positive note in the Republican party. Despite the apparent gender gap on the floor of the Republican convention, there are signs that it is weakening. Eight years ago they were they were insulting Michael Dukakis. This year they were insulting Hillary Clinton. Could that glass ceiling be developing cracks?

Don't forget, there were a number of other political parties with conventions. I know you're thinking, it's just a wasted vote, why bother with them. Well even a wasted vote for them is better than staying home. Remember your acting class: make an active choice.

First, there's the reform party -- the only third party officially recognized by the Powers of Acronym, ABC, CBS, and NBC. They had a two day convention with a one-week intermission just to be different. They've got some good ideas and the funding and popularity of their founder, Ross Perot.

However, they've also got one fatal drawback. They've got Ross Perot!

Hey, Ross! You're not being paranoid. Everyone is out to get you!

Then there are the Libertarians -- the Rodney Dangerfield of political parties. Harry Browne is their presidential candidate, who wrote a fascinating book on why government doesn't work. They've discovered this obscure document from the founding of our country and decided on their own that it has some important principles. It's called the Bill of Rights . You might want to read it sometime to discover what freedom is supposed to mean. The Libertarians are one of the few groups really dealing with Bill of Rights issues and about the only ones willing to seriously address the failure of the war on drugs.

Of course when the Libertarians say they're against government they really mean it. They also want to abolish the IRS, sell off the national parks, eliminate public education and all other social programs. Interesting ideas (and it might be fun to see the theme park that Spielberg and Disney would make out of the Grand Canyon), but can we really trust our safety-net accustomed society to adjust to that kind of chaos?

Next stop: The Green Party. They have no intention of winning, so they haven't even given positions on most issues. Consumer activist Ralph Nader is their candidate, so I imagine that their platform would be sort of a cross between Greenpeace and Consumer Reports. Hey, recycling is great, and as much as I am in favor of appropriate consumer protection, I don't want to have to own a set of Sears Craftsmen tools to open a bottle of aspirin, and if I want to take responsibility for my own body and smoke a cancer stick I'd like to be able to flick my bic without reading an instruction manual.

And Hey, coffee is SUPPOSED to be hot. I don't want to go to McDonald's to get my caffeine fix and have some pimply-faced kid serve me tepid brown fluid in a bottle with a nipple that he tests on his forearm to make sure it's safe for me to drink. OK?

And as I look at the glazed expressions of some of you in the audience who may actually be absorbing through this simplistic candy-coated approach to the news of the day, just a little bit too much political wisdom for the system to take, -- much like the greasy onion rings that are sitting on top of 6 shots of tequila and two shots of peppermint schnapps that you had in your dorm room earlier this evening -- I give you the Mylanta of knowledge that this too shall soon pass -- I am almost done.

I pass over the socialist and communist parties and give you one other convention I watched on C-Span. The Natural Law Party. Ironically created with the principle platform plank of abolishing political parties, this new political party seems to believe that if you take care of your health, everything else will be allright. They also believe that scientists should run the country. Now they've got a point. Scientists would certainly do a better job than politicians, but so would cab drivers.

I don't even remember the name of the Natural Law Party candidate, whose charisma makes Paul Tsongas look like Mario Cuomo -- sort of a Mr. Rogers goes to Washington.

So what's the point of this diatribe of trashing all the political parties? To get you to vote in November. Yes, that's right. Vote for one of these worthless parties or candidates. Why? Because your future is at stake.

It's criminal that in the birthplace of democracy, less people vote than in some dictatorships. Even when those people don't have a choice they realize how precious is the freedom to be able to register the fact that they care, and that in the long run, it can make a difference.

Instead of leaving the vote to the neanderthals who call in to all those talk radio shows, you can make political leaders start to notice you because you vote, and maybe then they'll start to realize that they have to make sense or someone else will come along who does make sense and take the election away from them.

When you don't vote, your message is very clear. You're saying, "I don't care what you do with the government, the country, my life, or my future. Whatever you want is fine with me."

Or in words you might understand better,

You know you'd better be in the room when Domino's is being called, so some asshole doesn't use your collective money to order three large pizzas with blue cheese, liver and anchovies.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong... but I'm not.

© 1996 Peter Guither.