Someone recently took a very informal political poll on MySpace that just about killed my soul. I was sorely disturbed to realize what a large percentage of people around my age are planning on voting for Bush. I kind of feel like even 10% of the populace is more support than Bush deserves, so that more than half of the people who responded to a "Who are you voting for?" bulletin board question support The Worst President We've Ever Had was shocking.

Even more disturbing were the reasons given: Kerry would take all of our tax money and give it to lazy, welfare recipients. Kerry would let Osama bin Laden "go." And my personal favorite: Bush is cuter than Kerry.

I had this misguided notion that our generation were educating ourselves, that we were starting to pay attention to politics because we were afraid to see things get worse. But the inarticulate, uninformed statements I saw posted almost made me lose hope entirely.

There were a fair number of people, too, who said they were voting for Kerry as the "lesser of two evils." While I often tend to view electorial politics through this lens, myself, in this instance I have to say that I'm not. As I wrote to a friend recently, I think we'd be lucky to have a man like Kerry in office.

Being a strong leader requires all the qualities that Kerry possesses: intelligence, an ability to negotiate, a willingness to look at all sides of an issue, and to change his mind when the situation requires, eloquence, experience, diplomacy. NONE of these are qualities Bush possesses. Bush mistakes headstrong resolve for leadership. We cannot allow our foreign policy to be built on the model of a snow plow.

I don't know what to do. I said the other day that all I could do was keep talking. But I don't know that anyone is listening, and it's entirely likely that if they are, they already agree with me. We've allowed ourselves to be so polarized we can't hear the other side anymore. We've disfigured democracy so thoroughly that it's become a joke. And it feels like no one really knows what to do.

We're going to hell in a handbasket. All I can hope is that it will prove so terrible once we get there, we will finally be able to turn things around and come back.