11/01/2008

Only 4 days to go...

... until they finally close the polls for the elections. Believe me, I've had it with them. No matter what I do I somehow get tangled up with this matter I so desperately tried to avoid. Not that I wasn't interested at first, but enough is enough. The law school has a number of big screen TVs scattered around its premises, which should be a good thing (especially if they had some Xbox 360s hooked up to them with "The Force Unleashed"). The fact that they always have CNN on them may also be a good thing, normally. But not in an election year. No matter when I take a glimpse on these monitors I always see Wolf Blitzer on trying to shove some insignificant little piece of political news down my throat. [Note: not that Fox News would be any different.] You could say I always have the option of not watching (and believe me, I try not to), but they have all the vending machines and the in-house Subway deli right there. Going starving is simply not my style so instead of engaging in a hunger strike I simply snivel about it online.

The other thing people seem to have stopped bearing in mind (or they never realized it at all?) is that with the elections coming to a close voters no longer respond to sensible arguments. They've already picked their "star" and will under no circumstances reconsider their choice. Even if a candidate would admit to something like foreign policy should be decided upon how many Russians you can see outside your window or that neither of them were born in the United States, it simply wouldn't change a thing. What does all that remind me of? How about 2006. How about partisanship at its peak. How about the distorting effect of mass media. How about people simply being stupid. [Oh wait, its their constitutional right! But at least they should know when to stop arguing with each other.]

Bottom line: I've had it. Luckily, one of our professors was smart (?) enough to put a final exam 3 days after Election Day. This way I can easily get out of invitations saying I need to study. Which I really do. Even though constitutional law is a huge part of the exam, the U.S. election system is so complicated that they don't dare teaching it even to law students. So at least I don't have to study that. Not that I haven't heard enough of it already.

One of my professors said this in a class a couple of weeks ago about a specific legal principle (and it was of course intended as a joke):

There's no divestment here but we still call it a divestment. But isn't that dishonest? NO! Consider it a polticial matter.

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