songs of the year / political musings.

(Forget what I said about pre-post disclaimers. You guys are intelligent enough to figure out what I'm talking about for yourselves.)

To continue what started in the last post:

30. “I May Be Rude, But I’m the Truth”—Cobra Starship
29. “Rust (The Short Story of Mary Agnosia)”—Anchor & Braille
28. “Piggy Bank Lies”--Emery
27. “A Stick, A Carrot and a String”--mewithoutYou
26. “The Butcher”—Project 86
25. “Unnatural Selection”--Muse
24. “Dark Angel Dragnet”—Project 86
23. “A John Hancock with the Safety Off”—Project 86
22. “The Angel of Death Came to David’s Room”--mewithoutYou
21. “Cave In”—Owl City
20. “Roswell’s Spell”--Chevelle
19. “Timothy Hay”--mewithoutYou
18. “In Shallow Seas We Sail”--Emery
17. “The Weight”--Thrice
16. “This Circus”--Chevelle
15. “The Bird and the Worm”—Owl City
14. “Allah, Allah, Allah”--mewithoutYou
13. “Forget Love, I Just Want You to Make Sense to Me Tonight”—Anchor & Braille
A brief footnote: this is also the winner for Song Title of the Year.

12. “A Sin to Hold on To”--Emery
11. “Hot Mess”—Cobra Starship
10. “If My Heart Was a House”—Owl City
9. “Shameful Metaphors”--Chevelle
8. “The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie”—mewithoutYou
Another footnote: this is also the winner for Best Video of the Year. (Watch it, it’s absolutely hilarious.)

7. “Circles”--Thrice
6. “Dear Death Part 1” and “Dear Death Part 2”—Emery
Yet another footnote: Yes, I’m listing these two separate songs as a collective. Neither can be fully appreciated without the other, and Part 2 immediately follows Part 1 on the album anyway. But when you put them together, the simple, haunting Part 1 makes the driving, energetic Part 2’s final words seem even more powerful. The end result is brilliant.

5. “Reinventing Robert Cohn”—And Then There Were None
4. “To Sand We Return”—Project 86
3. “In Exile”--Thrice
2. “Hello Seattle (Remix)”—Owl City
1. “The King Beetle on a Coconut Estate”—mewithoutYou

You know a song’s the best of the year when listening to it sends bona fide chills down your spine. Listen carefully to this song all the way through, and at 5:22 the lyrical genius and songwriting brilliance is overwhelming (especially for diehard fans who know the lyrics to “Four-Word Letter, Pt. 2” by heart). I won’t attempt to describe all that goes on in this song here. I’ll let you have the pleasure of figuring that out for yourselves.

And now for something completely different. It's been bugging me for weeks, but I've had other stuff to write since then.

So I was at my grandmother's 80th birthday party in Tavistock, this really swanky country club in New Jersey. To my immediate left is my uncle Ray. He's a great guy. He's got a good sense of humor and we can talk for a while about anything. Except, apparently politics.

My parents have known for a while that I'm not as conservative as they are. For the most part, they're fine with that. I've gotten a few jokes (especially whenever something goes wrong that could be blamed on Obama), and I've had the word 'liberal' used as an insult (which is pretty funny in retrospect), but it's all in good fun, and my parents don't think any less of me as a result. (I assume.)

But somehow my uncle and I got on the topic of politics. It was awful. My uncle is apparently even more conservative than my parents. The very notion of the government helping the poor was disgusting to him--he thinks that's the church's job. (Okay, yeah, the church should help, but that doesn't mean the government can't.) I was getting mercilessly grilled by him the whole time--and not in the way that my teachers would grill me where they're trying to show me holes in my overly idealistic logic. I honestly felt like he thought I was subhuman because I wouldn't align myself with the Republican Party.

This should never have happened.

George Washington told us never to have political parties. It took us a few months to disobey him. And now look where it's gotten us. We look down at members of opposing parties because they're members of opposing parties. Liberals think conservatives are greedy, backwards, idiotic Bible-thumping roadblocks on the way to progress (come on, who hasn't thought something like this about Bill O' Reilly?). Conservatives think liberals are godless Communists intent on destroying the moral fabric of the nation and depriving it of its work ethic.

There's a word for that kind of stereotyping: MORONIC.

This has to stop. I'm sick of the party system. It only divides. I know I'm not the only one who's been bashed for liberal views, and I know I look at many conservatives with my nose in the air. I'm just as guilty as anyone. But we have to make a commitment to end this. Your political alignment does not make you any more or less of a human being. It does not make you any greater or worse in the eyes of God. It means only you think governments should operate a certain way. So let's stop pretending that it means anything more.