Politics. Barf.

Enter cliché blog subject #1. I hope I come off as having something different to say compared to about about 863,294,725 other bloggers out there, and if I don't, I apologize.

To give a little history, I've pretty much always considered myself to be pretty liberal on most accounts. Looking back, I went through some phases where I was pretty obnoxious about it. I guess you could say that I was pretty die hard in my beliefs that liberalism could solve everyone's problems.

Long story short, as I've gotten older, I've become less and less believing that a political system or party can or will solve any of our problems as a country or as people. I don't consider myself a pessimist, and I do my best to try to see the best in people, but I guess that what I've come to believe is that people are far too flawed to ever not oppress, to ever not destroy, to ever not... be people.

Today's über-polarized political climate seems to have brought out the worst in people opposite of me who think that their politics are the answer to our problems and that anyone who disagrees can go... do something. Use your imagination there. Because of these factors, I find it harder and harder to align myself with pretty much any political belief without feeling like I'm putting my faith in something that isn't going to solve humanity.

I definitely don't consider apathy to be a positive trait, but I often find myself resorting to it in the face of the aforementioned political shitstorm. But what about issues where there is a clear right and wrong? I mean, what if Abe Lincoln was like "Well, slavery sure blows, but ya know, people just suck in general so why even bother?" Does the perspective that humanity is depraved mean that I just don't stand up for anything?

I struggle with this a lot. What do you guys make of it? I heard a really good sermon a couple weeks ago that sort of addressed this for me, so if you're interested at all, check it out.

I hope this post wasn't too much of a downer. On a side note, I got a couple rolls of film from the past couple of months developed this week, and I got a chance to scan the negatives. I'll just put up a few that I thought turned out okay. A lot of them were shot in really bad light, and the negative scans aren't nearly as good as a real print. I miss printing in the darkroom so much, but between my severe lack of time this semester and not having the cash for photo paper means that I'll have to settle for this for now at least.