It was a rush that became known to me only, albeit immediately, after high school. After traveling with friends to Bonnaroo there was a whisper, a shout and finally a full throated scream. It was the road, calling me to experience it. I gave in. From Manchester Tennessee I drove to St. Louis. That arch (a damn cool sight as it appears and then disappears over the horizon) was deemed my point of no return. From there I drove to Colorado, and then onward to California. It was a transformative experience, and an addictive one. That trip to California was followed by many others to a host of destinations.

If you've never done so, at some point every American should get in their car and simply drive. You may already be well traveled, but trust me, it's different when you drive. Even when you're not trying to meet people, exceedingly interesting ones are unavoidable. The old trucker with the thick rimmed glasses in Arizona, or the midget named Billy in Dothan (who chain smoked 305s and managed to give me the most amazing shortcut via the shadiest directions). Watching the landscape change gradually from Florida brush pines, to the lush Appalachians, to the garbage known as Kansas, to the dramatic Rockies instills a sense of awe. And while an airplane will get your where you're going quickly it doesn't free you from the strictures of society. You're simply given a full body cavity search and then shuffled into this strange aluminum tube with the rest of the cattle. There's something about a road trip that makes you feel free.

Those experiences were about two chapters ago in my life. Soon, in fact very soon, I will be embarking on yet another chapter. But before that I will once more throw caution to the wind and revel in that magical freedom. This time it's underpinned by an actual purpose. Most unfortunately it's not quite the “throw a bunch of clothes in a garbage bag and drive to New Hampshire” of days past. Now it's actually exceedingly legitimate: checking out fancy grad schools. Yup, the freedom will be enjoyed only under the specter of once again enslaving myself.

But c'est la vie. This trip will soon be followed by international travel, and to non-western cultures at that. As amazing as traveling the States is, while there are distinct cultural differences from region to region, place to place, you always feel kind of at home. It's variations on a theme. That's a good thing in many respects. At the same time, even the best micro-brew will never be Grey Goose. However, no matter what may come in the future, the road trip will always occupy a special place in my heart. I truly hope that anyone who may read this will heed my advice and at some point be able to say the same.

Well, I've decided to vote for Charlie Crist, possibly even work on his campaign. It's still a ways out, but the chances of something coming up that will change my mind are slim. The reason for my certainty is that I vote for Charlie Crist with the full expectation that he will not return the favor on many of my issues... maybe most of them. (one of the nice things about studying poly-sci is that I've had access to really, really smart people who would give me their unfiltered expertise on things if I asked. Charlie will almost certainly vote with Republicans). However, my support for Charlie Crist is rooted in something vastly more important than a single senate seat. Our gulf coast is about to be destroyed. About half of America (literally) cheered on the practices that led to this. They waved flags and called me an elitist because I live on a coast. Well, it turns out that a lot of people live on a coast. And a lot of people's lives depend on that ocean too. Unfortunately there was no way to explain this to everyone chanting “drill baby, drill”. And even more unfortunately, there still may be no way to explain it.

Ultimately the “tea party” stands for one thing and one thing only: rage. The anger supposedly stems from big government. Clearly though, that stem grows out of the fertile soil of economic duress and from where I stand it seems pretty apparent that government was not the cause of these hard times. If anything it was a lack of government. We privatized and de-regulated so aggressively we gave carte blanche to worst scumbags to ever wear a suit to cook up CDOs, CDSs and every other type of CD that necessitated the “bail outs”. Yet despite the fact that more government could have stopped all this from occurring the tea party's solution is “step out of the way Uncle Sam! Wall Street knows best!” (remember, when we're talking about financial regulation “the market” and “wall street” are one in the same)

As for the raison d'etre of the tea party, taxes, they are even more incoherent. They have a strict policy of less taxes. At the same time they also want fiscal discipline. You can't just cut your way to balanced budgets though. Most federal expenditures are mandatory, namely social security and medicare. Infrastructure, education and so forth make up only a small percentage of the discretionary (allocated yearly) budget. We would have to totally dismantle both social security and medicare to be able to balance the budget while cutting taxes at the same time. This is politically infeasible and everyone knows it. You might as well plan on mining gold from the moon. Paying down the national debt will both require spending cuts and tax increases. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

My point here has nothing to do with offshore drilling, financial regulation or fiscal policy. That oil rig was there long before Sarah Palin emerged on America's political radar. Bill Clinton had as much to do with de-regulation as did George W Bush or Ronald Reagan. And our government is going to deficit spend for the foreseeable future no matter who is in office. The big issue is that all the tea partiers know or care about is that they're angry and government is the fault. Media and the very politicians they rail against foster that rage. Anger is now a both a means and an end in American politics. It doesn't have to be this way.

I just read an article proclaiming that the tea party heralds the return of politics to the “ordinary American”. My initial thought was “why is being a fisherman living in Louisiana so unordinary?”. That's a cop out though. What the person was really trying to say is that the tea party is making politics more egalitarian by making politicians more accountable to the people. This is an even scarier assessment because the person who wrote that is either lying or actually believes it. There have always been rich, powerful people who control politics. And as there have always been, there will always be elites. It's a fact of life. As ordinary people we serve two purposes. The first is what the aforementioned author was referring to. Ultimately elected officials must be voted in, so their lies and misdeeds can only be so egregious. The fact that we exist keeps government in check. Tea party or not, this is the case and is unchanging. What the tea party can have an effect on is that the public's mood serves as a general direction for how our elected officials should proceed. At the moment the tea party is sending separate signals. To Republicans the tea party says “do exactly what you did thirty years ago, but more so”. To Democrats they say, “eat shit and die”. It precludes all else.

But while the tea partiers are sick and tired, I think most people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Let's compromise. It's how democracy works. Let's talk to one another again. We are tearing this country apart with unfounded anger. Anyone who says the bad outweighs the good needs to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. Glenn Beck needs to get in his Toyota SUV (could you really picture him in anything else?) and drive across the country. He needs to see our land, breath our air and talk to our people. Then he needs to look at the CIA factbook online and compare us with other countries around the world. This anger is unfounded and it is destroying us from the inside.

Do I want it my way? Yes.

Is it more important that we have a society where people can talk to each other? Yes.

Can I have both? No.

Back to Charlie. Governor Crist is best summarized as a competent, experienced, moderate Republican. Floridians love him. Marco Rubio is from the right wing of one of the most right wing of the 50 state Republican parties. From everything I know about him, he is fervent conservatism personified. The tea party loves him. Kendrick Meek is... a Democrat. He hasn't exactly been running a high visibility campaign, so that's pretty all I know about him. If there has ever been a referendum on whether we want reasonable political discourse in this country, this is it. I will vote for (what is in essence) a Republican if it's a vote for the future of Florida and America. I can only hope that others see the same way.

President Obama recently disclosed the size of the United States' nuclear weapons stock. Though I don't watch television news, it's not hard to imagine the hornets nest this will stir up, so it seemed prudent to give a little bit of perspective on it.

States want to be viewed favorably. In today's world everyone relies on each other. Not only that, but citizens have a remarkable degree of indirect control. Take China in 1989. I won't say the same of the incident because I will be in that country in a few months and would rather not have my own blog firewalled, but there was a big human rights incident which will come up with a bit of quick googling if you're not already aware of it. At any rate, the favored response of the Bush administration was to kind of pave over the incident. But because the United States supports human rights and freedom whenever it is feasible the favored response of the people (vis-a-vis their representatives in Congress) was to take a harder line on China. At the time China was not a huge creditor or powerful nation and we could afford to snub them. As a result America leveled economic sanctions on the PRC in 1990.

States must also deal with large multinational corporations. They too are subject to the whims of their consumers and do not want to be seen dealing with states that do bad things. As a result, PR is actually moderately important for a state in the modern international system. Further, if a state A acts like a total dick to state B, relations deteriorate. Generally it is in everyone's interest to have good relations. However, states have interests that diverge and often they will have to pull dick maneuvers. But because they they can't go too far over the line they must pick and choose.

Russia's nuclear deterrent is very important to it's security strategy. Ultimately, it is more important to them to keep that under secret than it is to incur the bad rap among citizens of other countries, consumers of the mulitnational corporations and the foreign policy making apparati of other states. They will probably not disclose how many nuclear weapons they have. Yet because they don't want to be total dicks, they will be forced to make concessions on things that are less important to them. That might be specific provisions in a new non-proliferation treaty. More importantly though these things add up, and there is an interplay between the actions of multiple states, not just the two at hand. In other words, combined with President Obama pushing them into yet more dick maneuvers and more bad behavior on the part of a certain recalcitrant middle eastern state Russia may decide it is in their interest to support greater sanctions on, oh say... Iran.

For all intensive purposes the US has effectively more nuclear weapons than any nation in the world and a vastly superior military than the next closest plausible combination of states. There is zero chance any other country will be able to use this information to effectively mitigate our second strike capability. President Obama has not stupidly disclosed previously confidential information for no reason. What has done is turned a meaningless tidbit of information into a potent piece of diplomatic leverage. This has characterized his foreign policy for the past year: forceful when necessary yet unlike his predecessor, utilizing the utmost pragmatism.