The Problem with Poltics

The problem with politics, and it seems to apply very much to the United States specifically, is the sheer amount of obfuscation.  The important issues are consistently glossed over and the issues that raise ire and divide the populace are brought to light.  It angers me to the point of gnashing teeth and slight foaming that the race boils down to gay marriage, tax cuts for rich, and who’s health plan sucks less.  Apparently good health care, like that in most developed first world nations, is socialist and unhealthy.  Obviously letting one socialist operation while destroy this whole country.  Cough, cough, medicare, cough, sputter social security, cough, hack, unemployment and welfare.

Politics as it turns out simply boils down to two things.  Are you a selfish prick?  And do you want religious nutbags controlling more of what is allowed.

The Republican Party

My original title was going to be the problem with the republican party.  The reason I didn’t choose that title is because the problems with that party do not exist in a vacuum, they were not created without context and the whole system is at fault here.  I would term myself most likely liberal but I find the democratic party the lesser of two evils instead of the right or better choice.

Part of the reason why the republican party has had such a crisis of character as of late is because the whole power base of the right has shifted dramatically in the past generation.  Republicans simply used to be the man stereotyped as hawkish and conservative in values.  Their power base has shifted to two camps, the very wealthy and the religious right.  Quick note the very wealthy are on both sides.  The reason being is that politics are bought and sold.  Corporations and businesses buy favorable attitude and law.  It is legal bribery, cronyism and a whole bunch of other not so good things.

The reason why the religious right has taken over the once proud (I type that word hesitantly and with trepidation) party is twofold.  One is that people just don’t vote enough.  There is a frustrating hair pulling amount of citizens who take voting casually.  This is a right people have been denied,  We take it for granted this important freedom.  Or it is treated simply like a drop in a well and cast aside as if their vote is of no importance.  I view my vote as not simply a single drop in the direction of the candidate I choose but a single drop in verifying that yes my generation votes and wants to be taken seriously by politicians.  Why the hell should they care about us if we don’t participate?  Why should they bother dealing with people who don’t hold their fate at the booth when countless others do?  The religious right is organized and they vote.  They’ve been slowly trying to get a foothold into the republican party.  Bit by bit the party changed from conservative values to family values and morals.  As if liberal and democrats were all hippy drug users who hate the nuclear family and want God thrown out of the home so they can enjoy their orgies.  But it’s hard to enjoy to an orgy if God is constantly watching… but I digress.

The other reason they have taken over is the religious right, or rather the religious extreme, has no sense of compromise.  Why should they compromise when they view their entire tenure as politician as a mandate.  There job is simple another arm of proselytizing or spreading the word.  This uncompromising view has taken over the party and forced moderates and rational individuals who joined the party for different reason to temper their views to this shifting base.  The republican party has abandoned its true self and moved towards this other ideal.

The Democratic Party

We have to be fair in our bashing.  To be fair it would be correct to label democrats as blowhards, self-righteous douche bags, hypocrites, weaklings, cry-babys, do nothings, bleeding hearts and a bunch of other stuff I don’t have time to type.  President Clinton is probably the best example of a democratic President in a long while.  But he will always be marred for his moral indiscretion.  People will always make excuses for him because he is charming and intelligent and generally did a good job (save for continuing the trend to allowing breaks for big business which has not done so well for us).  But as the President he should have been the example of the best of us.  It’s a tough responsibility and he is just a man but tough shit.  Millions of people keep their junk in their pants when presented an opportunity.  He should have too.

Also there is John Kerry who fucked up so bad it hurts.  All he had to do was shut up and smile and say I’m not Bush and he could have won.  But the fucker had to keep speaking.  Why the fuck do Democrats have verbal diarrhea?  Just shut the hell up after you made a point and stop being smug.  No one gives s hit if you’re right when you’re an asshole.  I just want to roll up a newspaper and whack them on them nose and say ‘No, bad.  No, stop it.”.

Healthcare

There is an enormous problem with healthcare.  The first thing is its fucking expensive.  If you insurance lapses and you happen to get into an accident you might as well just sell some organs because you are now in crushing debt.  And not a few hundred dollars.  We are talking tens of thousands.  We punish the poor in this country.  Charity tends to disappear when it touches money.  It’s great to help out others but don’t touch my fucking money or I’ll cut you.  It’s kind of like N.I.M.B.Y. but more violent.  (Not In My Back Yard).  Right now my wife and I are DINKS, another stupid acronym meaning double income no kids.  It’s fucking awesome.  We have a house we can make comfortable payments on and life is pretty good.  We both have decent jobs, various important insurance and some money left over.  We’re reasonably okay if some financial crisis hits.  But we’re not the norm.   Just changing one of those factors screws up the equation.  Kids fuck up everything.  It’s certainly not their fault.  But they are hideously expensive and chew up all your free time.  Being without insurance (health, car or otherwise) is like a ticking time bomb.  You never know when it will go off but your racing to see if you’ll have enough money for protection before it does.  A few months after I got placed onto my wife’s health insurance I passed out from dehydration and slammed my ribs on a beverage cart on an airplane.  I had to spend a day in the hospital in Houston.  Even though I told them it was dehydration they insisted on tests, hospitals tend to do that with the whole being allergic to lawsuits things, and I am extremely glad I got out of there only needing to pay a few hundred dollars.

Everyone gets sick and without a decent plan its basically another fuck you to poor people.  If you can’t pay money every month you don’t deserve to get good care.  You don’t deserve to stay healthy.  Anytime someone argue for abolishing affordable healthcare or government stipends, or goodness universal healthcare, they are saying they don’t give a shit if poor people get sick and can’t get help.  We as American’s seem to think it’s like a black mark to be poor.  That you’ve done something wrong if you haven’t made it.  My generation and everyone one anteceding it will bear this cross.  Why?  Because of crippling student debt – you need a college degree for any starting job and tuition cost have increased far more than inflation or, more importantly, their worth – an oversaturated market and convenient acceptance in the culture for business to treat employees like cattle.

Gay Marriage

Why is gay marriage even an issue?  Denying people these rights is spitting in the face of the equal rights movement and progression.  Those who are in the way are simply hate mongers.  What affects the sanctity of marriage are shitty marriages.  And sanctity a word which talks about holiness is not one that should have anything to do with politics.  Religion has no place in politics.  But if you want to argue in that manner the supporting argument is in Leviticus which primarily deals with property and it could be interpreted to be that men should not treat other men as they would women (who are property).

Who does gay marriage affect, people?  You can’t outlaw being gay (some countries have but they are not the kind of places we should be mimicking) so why only focus on marriage.  Denying marriage won’t stop people from being gay.  It’ll simply piss them off and deny them things like better taxes and all the other help given to families (like shared healthcare).

Then there is the epitome of stupid, the argument that allowing gay marriage will allow unconventional marriages like a dude and a horse.  For one things you’re an idiot.  For another have you met a horse?  If you start have relations with a horse and they don’t want that to continue you’re going to the hospital.

Stop being stupid and just let this go.  Don’t politicize your hatred.  It’s un-evolved to hate people in this manner.

Taxes

Tax break for the rich is so stupid it hurts.  Trickledown economics would have you believe that people up top with plenty of money should be taxed less as they will put it back into the economy and it will trickle down to everyone else.  This isn’t just condescending treating everyone like dogs waiting for scraps but outlandishly stupid if you believe it be true.  Wealthy people are great at staying wealthy.  There is nothing wrong about this.  Honestly, I’d be okay with tax breaks if we closed up all the loopholes so they actually paid what they were supposed to instead of closer to 9 percent or so.  I don’t think you should be punished for being wealthy but it seems the more money you have the easier it is to hide it, classify it differently or declare losses.  Of course this is not simply the method of the wealthy as there are tax cheats at every level.  But the five thousand skimped by one individual is dwarfed by those who trim off millions of tax debt.

Oh and can we for fucks sake just honestly tell people what the tax plan is.  Stop saying you’ll close tax loops and trim the budget show what you’ll do.  If you’re hiding something it’s for a reason and generally one that isn’t good.

Offshore Drilling

Have we not learned from our mistakes?  Big oil fucks up the environment.  They charge us through the nose (though other countries pay more) and they deny wrongdoings.  Why reward these immoral soulless monsters.  They pay to keep renewable energy sources unfunded.  The only way to a method or source to be adopted is through government funding.  That how the other energy sources came into being.  But fuck that let’s give these assholes more places to pollute and violate.  Screw you clean renewable energy I’m an American and we like our oil.

Terrorism

Yup, I went there.  Terrorism should not be a political issue.  Everyone agrees it's bad and that there is a handful of very dangerous, very angry people out there.  We are not the only country who has been hurt by terrorists.  More than the deaths, it wounded American pride and made us feel unsafe.  For this we have willingly given up essential freedoms and rights to bad people within our own country who should be protecting those rights not exploiting them.  There are many who espouse smaller government, decreased spending and much of that rhetoric but still insist on funding the military industrial complex (which saps away the money that could be used for say education or healthcare or building bridges that won’t fall down) as well as supporting bills that increases the ability of the government to spy, monitor, track, profile and peruse any all private data you have.  Lack of privacy is the issue that no one seems to be talking about and it’s critical, more today than ever, with our connected communities.  With everything happening though keyboards data integrity and security is paramount.  But throw a few boogey men (very real very scary boogey men) and we roll over and give up.

Religion

Faith is just fine be me.  I respect anyone with these convictions.  But I have a few problems with various institutions.  Like the whole you’re going to hell for not agreeing with me thing.  But mostly I take issue with the fact that religion has been a front for the suppression of scientific thought and learning, the acceptance of hatred of those not like yourself, treating anything else as inferior, and the lack of charity.  Charity is not spreading the word of faith.  Charity is feeding people.  Charity is giving up you world possessions and wandering to help others.

Why the fuck aren’t religious institutions taxed.  Millions of dollars, rare priceless art adorn the halls f religious institutions and not a penny goes to the government.  They are using all the benefits of living in their various countries without helping the country out.

There are many good caring people with strong faith.  Many who let their moral compass determine what is right not a book or religious leader.  But these are the people whose voices are drowned out by their vile cousins who give a black eye to religion.

But what agitates me is religion involving itself in politics.  This country was not founded under God, it was founded under men, imperfect but intelligent men.  This country was founded by those who fled religious persecution.  We are not a nation of one religion but of many.  Faith may make us strong but it will never strengthen the government; not when so many people would pervert it to their whims.

Criticism and neo-McCarthyism

Why the hell does it seem like every time someone criticizes the government they are labeled as anti-American or communist or liberal?  Why can’t I criticize something I love that I want to be better.  Am I not allowed to say bad things about any of my Presidents or only about some.  I count myself as left leaning but I do not hate W Bush.  I find that he has many qualities as a man that admirable.  I thought he was a shit President and I could not believe the backlash against those who voiced criticism.  McCarthyism is gone but remnants still exist.  It worked once the fear and paranoia fueling such violent vitriol.  The speak out against it was to be un-American.  I hate that term.

But, as always, these are only my opinions and I’ll keep them until someone can prove me wrong.  Because I’d rather be correct than right.  Something that is most definitely lacking in our politicians.

There are countless other things that piss me off about politics but if I keep typing I’ll up my blood pressure.  So I’ll leave you with the rant as it is.

Ben