Politics is a bloodsport

As I have mentioned before, it is kind of a blessing living overseas during a presidential election year: not only is voting easier but we are spared the barrage of campaign commercials.

I'm sure politics has actually always been like this, but to my eye it has become much more polarized--a sport rather than a discussion of competing ideas--and vitriolic. That makes it less interesting and more annoying. It is often juvenile and easy to ignore.

So let's talk about juvenile behavior for a minute. Way back in the day, I spent four summers taking some classes in North Carolina. We were a bunch of junior high and high school students basically living like college students: on our own except for showing up to class and meals. And after lunch, there would invariably be a crowd of people gathered around the cafeteria's Mortal Kombat machine. Oh, how we would drop quarters into its bottomless maw.

I was terrible at it, of course. I could barely make the characters punch and kick, let alone pull off the complicated combination of button pushes and joystick tugs that would trigger a signature move. It was fun (and oddly social) to watch, but not very interesting to play.

But today, I was introduced to a project that made both the video game and politics seem... well... awesome. Behold:




Paul's "church and state" move and "red vest straitjacket" seem unbeatable, honestly. But Romney was able to easily fight off him and Herman Cain's "creepy ad" power move. Impressive! And round 2:



There are a lot of cheap shots, but hey--art imitates life, right? And the Republican primary was indeed pretty brutal, rhetorically speaking. How will the rest of the battles shape up? We have less than five weeks to find out. Here's hoping the actual campaign has an exciting finishing move... except, of course, with a lot less blood.