I’ve been fuming for several days now, thinking I wanted to write a nice, long, expletive-filled, no-holds-barred rant about recent political developments. About cowardly, disarrayed Democrats who don’t have the conviction of their own ideals, and about a President I still basically like and respect, but who really needs to get it through his head that the other side ain’t going to play nice with him, like ever, and it’s time he drops the “cool and aloof” thing and actually leads his frickin’ party. A party that I continue to vote for because I really have no other choice — it’s not like a third-party candidate has a chance in hell of getting a national seat; Mr. Nader, I’m still pissed at you! — but which continually lets me down and embarrasses me.

I was also going to rant about the other side of the aisle and how unbelievably infuriating it is that the Republicans’ entire political strategy consists of stamping their feet and shouting “no” like recalcitrant four-year-olds. And about how maddening it is that the “no strategy” actually seems to be working, and that they get away with saying any old kind of bullshit thing because they never, ever back down and no one ever calls them on it. And about what a damn, ironic, tragic shame it is that Ted Kennedy spent his entire career trying to make it so no one had to worry about ending up homeless if they happened to get sick, but now that the health-care reform bill is finally only a whisker away from passage, it’s about to vaporize because his seat has been taken by one of those recalcitrant four-year-olds, and it’ll be another 20 years before anyone dares raise the subject again, just like the aftermath of Clinton-care. And I was going to hold out a special ration of bile for those damn-fool Massachusetts Democrats, who lost Teddy’s seat because they were so friggin’ complacent and apparently thought they were simply entitled to it.

Then I was going to go on about how vile it is that the Supreme Court just handed the electoral process over to anonymous, impersonal business entities. And how useless this country’s news media is for treating politics like a football game that’s all about who wins and who loses instead of explaining the things people really need to know (like, for instance, how the U.S. really does not have the best health care system in the world and how the bill that’s about to vaporize, while imperfect, could make things better, or what a bad idea it is to formally recognize and condone the influence of corporations in politics). And how the country that won World War II and sent men to the bloody moon is now filled with ignorant pussies who dress their children in suits of armor to ride bikes, and are ready to give up any civil liberty for some ineffable guarantee of “safety,” and who vote for whichever candidate tells them the scariest or most infuriating story. And so on and so forth.

But every time I called up a fresh Notepad window and actually tried to compose this rant, I couldn’t seem to get much beyond the bare bones I just outlined. I just couldn’t manage to get wound up enough about it. I know, I know: this happens sometimes to men my age and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But still…

Instead of the soothing roar of my own bile, all I could hear in my head was dialog from a movie, echoing slightly the way it does when you’re walking across the parking lot of a drive-in theater. Dialog from Escape from New York, to be precise, a scene very near the end when Lee Van Cleef’s Houk asks Snake Plisskin — Kurt Russell — if Snake intends to follow through on an earlier threat to kill him. And Snake gives it a moment’s consideration, then growls, “I’m too tired.”

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. I’m just tired…