Nowhere to Turn in the Voting Booth

I was in a social interaction my elementary school principal, Miss Carpenter, advised me strongly to avoid--the political discussion. My friend, the only person in the world I can call that anymore, never revealed his darker, political side. That was why we were friends.

But this election was confusing me. I didn't know my own my mind anymore. There were so many choices. I was trying to break my own internal deadlocks by exploring my fellow human being's thought processes. It did not go as planned.

"So, who you voting for?" I asked.
"Don't know."
"What about Hillary?"
"No way. She reminds me of my mother. She is Cybele, earth-mother-castrating-goddess."
While I always admired my friend's mythological erudition, he clearly had issues with women.
"Why do you think she's a castrating earth-mother?"
"Just a hunch. You think Vince Foster killed himself for nothing? That the McDougals went to prison for nothing? Hillary demands human sacrifice."

I wasn't going down that memory lane or indulging my friend's revealed misogyny, so I changed candidates.
"What about Obama?"
"He's like the dollar bin at the old Filene's. Everyone's looking for their dream in him."
"And that's a bad thing because..."
"Who is he, really? He's like Lionel Ritchie trying to be P.Diddy. Or the Wizard of Ox talking through a megaphone."
"What about John McCain?"
"He'll be snoozing in cabinet meetings."
"What about Romney?"
" Big Love in the White House."
"He's a Mormon but he has one wife."
"Yeah. That's what he wants you to think. There's a tradition of philandering Democrats with girlfriends on the side--FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton. But here's a Republican who can have multiple wives. What's gonna stop him?"
I was at my wit's end.
"Okay, what about Huckabee?"
My friend started singing, "Give me that old time religion!" in a surprisingly rich baritone.
"He's a Baptist minister, but he's also a populist. He plays bass in a rock band."
"Prayer in the schools? Every state of the union, press conference and televised speech invoking Christ? He'll set the first amendment back three hundred years."
"Our nation is only 220 years old."
"Precisely my point. Huckabee would bring us back to the colonial period. Only Christian property owners could vote."

This conversation deeply shook my confidence in friendship. You never really know anybody until you hear their political views. It also made me realize that in this election prejudice lurks in every choice. Any vote can be interpreted as a bias crime when we vote archetypes rather than issues. You are either a sexist, a racist, an ageist, or a religious bigot.

Change is such a difficult proposition. It was so simple when it was just two white guys in suits talking tax hikes and cuts, strong military, more social programs....Every candidate looked the same and the only symbols were the elephant and the donkey. Now the collective unconscious is running wild and we are voting our hearts, our dreams, our wishes.

It's all become so complex. Maybe the United States is finally growing up.