It’s us vs. them, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, liberal vs. conservative.

It’s an entertaining show, and the only thing wrong is too many viewers think it’s new to the airwaves.

It should come as no surprise to me or anyone else that there are so many people shocked about the turn the fight for the White House taken.

It’s gotten kind of ugly, but not any uglier than usual. You wouldn’t know that from people’s reactions, though.

We have to buy into the hype and make ourselves believe it’s personal. Make ourselves believe John McCain has a vendetta against Barack Obama and that Obama is lying through his teeth when he tells us how much he respects the right of privacy that Sarah Palin’s family should enjoy.

We just can’t make ourselves believe that if McCain and Obama were to meet under other circumstances, they would share a cigar and a laugh.

At the risk of sounding like a complete fool, I will force myself to believe that. I have to.

You see, elections, in my mind (strange and complicated as my mind is) are like prize fights.

Yes, I’m appalled at the shots two heavyweights take at each other, even weeks before they step into the ring. But it’s a show, a comical ruse meant to roust our emotions.

The truth is, those two fighters were probably playing checkers together years before they were able to make a decent living boxing.

It’s an age-old quarrel that pops up in every division of philosophy ever created.

Sure, there has been severe bloodshed in the fights, but somehow the ball always rolls back around to civility. At least we hope.

The Republicans think their way is better because …

The Democrats think their way is better because …

Truth be told, neither could stand without the other. White isn’t white without black. Day isn’t day without night. Same with young and old, man and woman and so on and so forth.

Every way of doing things is a bad way of doing things if it is done incorrectly. It doesn’t matter who is running the show, how intelligent or how experienced. Man woman, Catholic or Protestant.

So the next time, Obama takes a jab at McCain’s voting record in the Senate, brush it off.

The next time McCain says something that makes it look like Santa Claus is trying to coax a youngster to his knee, think nothing of it.

The reality is, either can be completely wrong or either can be completely right if you let certain people feed you information.

But now that I think of it, a physical confrontation between the two of them would be pretty funny. Just to make it even, we could blindfold them both and tie their hands behind their backs.

What? I told you my mind is complicated. Not to mention severely detached at times.