Election Season: Overtime for My Shredder and My Telephone

Forgive me readers for I must do it again. It's been four months since my last rant and I can no longer control my fingers at the keyboard. I've been thinking of this one for a long time and when I arrived home from work this afternoon I knew that today would be the day. We are nearing the pinnacle of the political season and the inundation of phone calls and unsolicited mail is nearing its peak. It all just makes me want to scream!

Ever since my early twenties, I've been politically minded. I realized at a young age that complacency towards government should not exist in a democracy, and so I paid attention. I kept up with the latest political stories, I resourced all sorts of news venues for stories, and I voted. Along the way I had trouble understanding why so many people were apathetic towards politics and the political process in general, until now.

Right next to my front door is my mailbox. The first thing I do when I get home every day is look inside to retrieve whatever's inside and today I my box was filled with several large sized placards from political campaigns and their supporters.

"Thank you Senator Foley for protecting our tax dollars." (Education Reform Now Advocacy Committee)

"Lee Zeldin: Too scary for Long Island." (NYS Democratic Committee)

"Lee Zeldin is a debt collector." (NYS Democratic Committee)

"Had enough of the mess in Albany? Then vote No on incumbent Dean Murray." (NYS Democratic Committee)

"Congressman Tim Bishop stands up for Education." (NY State United Teachers)

"Who owns a piece of Lee Zeldin?" (NYS Democratic Committee)

Now that's six more pieces of paper I need to shred, and that's on top of the four I shredded yesterday and three the day before. Only the Good Lord and these idiots from political parties and political advocacy organizations know for sure how many more I must shred before next Tuesday.

You can see from the sources of these placards that my affiliation is with the Democratic Party, yet I'm sure that neither they nor their supporters corner the market on such advertising. Is this what political fundraising is all about? I say this is why money should be taken out of politics completely.

It is very annoying that in this day and age, when identity theft is at an all time high, I have to safeguard myself by shredding anything that comes into my house with my name, address, or any other personal information on it, a necessary chore. It's bad enough that we continue to be inundated with all sorts of this type of advertising every day, but why must we endure so much more wasted paper during the election season? (Much less the negative messages imprinted on them!)

After I entered my house, I put my stuff down and gave my attention to the answering machine, which was beeping. I had three messages, two of them from so called 'bots' and one from a real person:

"With Election Day drawing near..." delete.

"Hello, the New York State Union of..."delete.

"This is a message from your..."delete.

Here I was, getting home from a long day at work to find messages on my answering machine. I smiled. It's nice when people call. But when I played the messages, you can imagine how disappointed I became.

My telephone has been ringing off the hook lately. One of my favorite inventions of recent years has been the caller ID, because I don't have to answer these calls when I'm home. Even so a ringing phone brings with it some anticipation, whether it's good or bad, but when you check the caller ID and see "New York State...", United Democratic...", or especially "unknown" numbers, anticipation turns to dismay. Over the weekend, my phone rang no less than fifteen times and not one was a personal call!

So come on people, are you with me? Are you getting placards in the mail? Does your phone ring off the hook while you're eating dinner? Do you own a shredder? How do we put a stop to all this ridiculousness? I've become so fed up with this junk that I may not even vote this year, at least not for the people who've been bugging me for the past six weeks...