If it weren’t for ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS news, I’d be excited that another semester is here. I’d be looking forward to the coming year, just like I always do around January, when I make all my New Year’s resolutions to stop eating bad things, stop procrastinating, stop using my credit card, blah-blah-blah. You know the game.

But instead, the major networks are going to continue to punish us with their constant reminders that we voters are no longer of any consequence.

I just don’t think my self-esteem can handle both the Senate and a bunch of life changes at the same time.

Yes, I’m talking about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal again. Who isn’t talking about it? For entirely too long now, the evening news has bombarded us with long Senate trial transcripts concerning the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It will continue. Relentlessly.

Self-righteous old men who have never (uh-huh, we all believe that!) cheated on their wives will carry on with great pomposity on the necessity of immediate action. Angry women who have been unable to forgive their philandering husbands will demand blood and remind us of past indiscretions overlooked by the good ol’ boys’ club.

And no one will talk about what the American people want because, frankly, we don’t count anymore. Is anyone else sick of this federally-funded soap opera? Is anyone else making New Year’s resolutions never to vote again?

Yes, he lied. But most of us don’t think he committed crimes against the country. So, will it ever end? According to The Miami Herald (HERALDlink, January 8, 1999), the opinion polls don’t support a conviction or a long trial or testimony from Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan and Betty Currie. So, what do you bet the Senate goes for the whole ball of wax anyway? A CNN / USA Today / Gallup poll suggests that two out of three Americans don’t agree with the Senate. They think Clinton is doing a good job and should be left alone to do it.

Wait a minute. I know it was a long time ago, so maybe my memory is a little fuzzy, but isn’t the Senate made up of elected politicians who are sworn to represent the collective voice of their constituents? Isn’t it the end of democracy in this country when elected officials use their positions of power to impose their own values and convictions on the rest of the country? Now who is subverting the Constitution? Now who is committing crimes against the country?

Not to pick on any one politician, but they’re beginning to all look and sound alike to me. According to Reuters, Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) “told ‘Meet the Press’ it was important that the American people felt justice had been done in the Senate. ‘Censure will not bring closure and finality to this.'”

Which American people is he talking about, I wonder? All of us? Or only those Americans who agree with him? (By the way, what happened to government by the people? How are we any different than every other country in the world where a few dictate to the majority? I want to know who decides where to draw the line between right and wrong whenever we decry the mistreatment of unrepresented peoples in the international community. I vote, but I know no one ever asked me.)

And now our fine elected senators are promising to hold a bipartisan trial. Since lawyers are so good at using dictionary definitions to undermine testimony (remember Clinton’s definition of sexual relations?), I thought a definition of bipartisan was in order (according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, Third College Edition).

First, partisan, which means “n. often an unreasoning, emotional adherent… any of a group of guerrilla fighters, esp. a member of an organized civilian force fighting covertly to drive out occupying enemy troops … adj. blind or unreasonably devoted.”

And then there is the definition of the prefix bi-, which means “having two” and “doubly on both sides, in two ways or directions.”

That makes total sense to me: the Senate is promising us double the unreasonableness and covertness and blindness in this upcoming trial that two out of every three Americans don’t want to happen in the first place.

The only way these senators can guarantee Clinton a fair trial is to disqualify themselves from the jury — just like every other judge and juror would have to do in a civil case. Let’s not pretend that any trial conducted by the Senate will be fair. It’s a contradiction in terms.

I don’t know. Maybe my only New Year’s resolution should be to stop watching the news, but I’d rather resolve to overthrowing our corrupted government and replacing it with a true democracy. Like that even exists.

Kata Alvidrez is a graduate student in English from Los Angeles.