I've been noticing the prevalence our almost screaming need to be right regarding our opinions about the candidates in the election. I, like many of my friends, have been tempted to jump into the various arguments and rationalizations of my choices. It's seductive. I'm sure that my arguments are the right ones!

Last night I began to observe the urge, and wonder - what's the draw? What's the seduction? Why do I think I should voice my "informed" position? Do I really need to be more right than those who argue their positions against my beliefs? I noticed the underlying psychological default emotion, the drift, the pull, is to yes. I need to be right about my opinion.

How come?

Well it seems that it's connected to my own identity. For sure that I have one. And for sure, it doesn't live like a construct that I've crafted over my 75 years. No, rather, it's more like it's the truth. It's reality.

And so based upon that truth, I look at those who so blatantly, and yes even authentically, advocate against my candidate of choice and I wonder; how can an otherwise seemingly intelligent - and sometimes educated - person, possibly arrive at that stupid kind of reasoning?

How could they possibly overlook all the negatives for their candidate while so vociferously attacking my candidate? Where did their sanity go?

Well it went into the toilet with the rest of our basest needs to defend our identities. And yes it is our identities we are advocating, and the identities that our identities can't abide that we are attacking. It's not actually the candidates.

We argue for our particular candidate because we're on rails, We're required by 20,30,40, or in my case, over 70 years of programming, now hard wired, to defend our identities, and the candidates that most closely agree with our personal realities - to defend, attack, and argue!

There's no rational choosing here! It's all our programming! On stage and mirrored back at us to watch. And this morning's news shows - our dramatization machinery - reported our collective reactions to our own driveness: 80% of us are disgusted with this election. 80% of us are disgusted with our own behaviors - or maybe embarrassed by how easily we get sucked into, repeat, and dramatize, the very rhetoric that disgusts us.

So the election is either attacking candidate of choice (my identity) or supporting them (my identity). And even as I'm drawn to participate in this slaughter of identities, I disgusted.

Who did this to me?