Regarding the current, highly charged and confusing health care debate (e.g., is a public option off the table or not?), Peter Suderman — serving as one of several interim bloggers at The Daily Dish while Andrew is on sabbatical — writes:

Democratic politics is a messy business. It’s disorganized and frantic and unpredictable and frustrating. Politics is a matter of shouting, and dissent, and deal-making, and strategy, and slippery rhetoric, and compromise. It is not a matter of deciding on the “right” policy and then making it so — even when your party controls the White House, the House, and the Senate.

How might we respond to this mess? Suderman offers several alternatives and a recommendation:

… there are a number of potential responses: Engage earnestly with the system, sit things out, or, as H.L. Mencken suggests, lean back and chuckle grimly as the farce replays itself over and over again.

Given my libertarian streak, I’d also add a final thought: The way to avoid the maddening convulsions of politics isn’t to change them, or rise above them, or move past them, or transform them, or whatever the trendy term of art is on any given day. It’s to avoid them — and reduce their power to hold sway over how we live. And the more decisions about our lives and welfare we put in the hands of politicians, the harder that will be to do.

I don’t think I could ever muster the strength of will to avoid politics all together. It’s a powerful drug. Then again, the thought of political abstinence has a certain allure and many potential merits. And admitting I’m a junkie might very well be (as with other addictions) the first step toward healing.