raison

Not that things haven't tickled/enraged me in the past few...what's it been, months? (Although I do seem to have the rage under control for the most part. Now I'm amused by most things, in a cynical, snickering sort of way.) So I entered law school; that's going well so far. It's not scary, contrary to all the horror stories I heard from veterans in the past few months, but the assignments are quite time-consuming. I'll try to write more about that later. For now, I'll just focus on the reason I'm writing this post: the 3% of the American population that has no opinion on the way things are going in this country, according to a recent CNN poll result.* What the hell's wrong with you people? I can't imagine what sort of passive, Zen-practicing souls would be so detached from or unaffected by world events as to not give a sh-t. Sure, the survey question provided no middle ground for people who may have been concerned but not angry, but still!!! It's not normal to be opinion-less in times like these. Heck, I even have opinions about people not having opinions. Maybe that's not healthy either.

Findings of this kind amaze me. An argument could be made that to the extent that this poll result reflects this 3%'s susceptibility to persuasion either way in matters other than questions of national import, they might make a perfect jury b/c they're essentially blank slates. To be frank, though, I've had serious concerns about the place of juries in our legal system for a while. I don't trust "the people," and I sure as hell don't believe you can make a "reasonable person" by putting 12 random people in a room. The fact remains, however, that no one has been able to come up with a better alternative so far, so, perhaps much like democracy, the jury system is the worst system except for every other system.

* The question posed to those polled was: "Would you say you are generally content with the way things are going in the country today, or is there something you would say you are angry about?" 76 percent of the sample (1,004 adults) said they were "angry about something," while 21 percent said they were "generally content." Three percent had no opinion. See WaPo blog for more.