Walter Kirn on the Current Discourse

[T]his hyped-up so-called politics is all people have to talk about now, it seems.

I remember when people talked about themselves. At thee dinner table and in the diner you heard about that sports car-from-a-kit your neighbor was building, about some lady's kidney tumor, about who was wooing another man's wife, and about the bear that was eating from someone's apple tree. These little stories added up to life. You got a sense of how people were actually managing.

Now you hear what they're thinking. What a bore. Most of them can't think, and have never tried, and are just repeating what others think and adding their own misinterpretations and biases. I could care less, frankly.

The neighbors are next door. But because they talk only about politics, I have no idea what their lives are like and they don't either for the most part, they don't either.

- Walter Kirn, guestblogging at andrewsullivan.com