Checking my mail at AOL, brought me across their story on today’s so-called Super Tuesday election which had a couple of polling questions about how one would characterize “excitement” about the elections and about how “passionate” I might be about all this.

It’s enough to send one to a reconsideration of smoking and its slow-slide suicide. The decisions of a democratic nation— and I keep thinking we’ll suddenly find a way to resurrect ourselves from this fascist nightmare one of these days — ought to be made soberly, with each voter in full possession of all the facts he or she believes to be needed having had the time to ask all the questions that had come to him or her. Then, perhaps, passion might be warranted. Commitment, for sure.

In our current system, the “feelings” people have about the elections have just about the same validity as the phony passion that inspired the gang fights after Indiana basketball games. The “passion” one sees people displaying about the Super Bowl is legitimate because it’s a game and, outside the record book, pretty meaningless in the flow of history. But elections? Passionate? Well, that’s the kind of thinking that sends maniacs out into the street to bomb, say, Olympic gatherings because they disagree with policy on abortion.

I guess this is another way to say just how sorry I am to have missed the Enlightenment.