22 ms·

In a two party system it is often a “worse of two evils” … But when you have people like some of the people put forth by the GOP as candidates… it can be hard

In a two party system it is often a “worse of two evils” … But when you have people like some of the people put forth by the GOP as candidates… it can be hard to avoid a good vs evil comparison… Democrats aren’t automatically good people and a lot of them at various levels of politics are clearly just in it for the money and power… but some of these Republican candidates… I don’t even know how some of them get votes beyond hardcore republican voters who will vote republican because they believe, at a near religious level, that they are a republican voter be it earnest thought, parental indoctrination, or just outright propaganda, but they have been convinced and are now locked in and will remain “republican voters”. George Washington had it right, political parties weaken the mind and rot society through the slow abrogation of decision making towards deference to a greater party loyalty when the first loyalty of an elected official should be to their office, and the second to those who elected them. He saw it coming and warned against it in his farewell address to congress after just 8 years as President he could see the seeds of what would become modern political polarisation growing… Edit: I should mention I’m Australian so my perspective is that of studying history and viewing US politics from the outside and seeing how US foreign policy affects my own country.

lockhouse 3y ago
I agree with you about how awful a two party system is. I sincerely wish that political parties were not a thing in this country and we simply looked at the candidate and their own personal policies and voting track records instead of the letter next to their name on the ballot. Just to give you a heads up, be careful what news sources you consume regarding American politics. Most of our media is left-biased.
- techdragon 3y ago
  Oh absolutely. It’s a fun detail that unlike a lot of other other governments, political parties aren’t actually codified in the US at the foundational documents level, when you find political parties backed into government somewhere (like bipartisanship mandates in review processes) it’s centuries of the bureaucratic sedimentation where it has built up rules to handle the changing of time and the changing world. It’s easy to see the biased nature of media when you have a lifetime of exposure and get even a basic level of education on comparing sources and other media literacy techniques. I live in Australia where the newspapers are long known for bias. A great example of bias at work is media coverage of the WGA (and now SAG, etc) strikes… all the big news organisations CNN, CBS, Fox, etc are owned by the companies the WGA are negotiating against … you’ve got a neat example of how these companies put their spin on an issue outside of the traditional US political fighting and where the left viewpoint/bias of most of them is now at odds with the corporate agenda and how painfully obvious the editorial biases are counter to that.

lockhouse 3y ago

I agree with you about how awful a two party system is. I sincerely wish that political parties were not a thing in this country and we simply looked at the candidate and their own personal policies and voting track records instead of the letter next to their name on the ballot. Just to give you a heads up, be careful what news sources you consume regarding American politics. Most of our media is left-biased.

techdragon 3y ago
Oh absolutely. It’s a fun detail that unlike a lot of other other governments, political parties aren’t actually codified in the US at the foundational documents level, when you find political parties backed into government somewhere (like bipartisanship mandates in review processes) it’s centuries of the bureaucratic sedimentation where it has built up rules to handle the changing of time and the changing world. It’s easy to see the biased nature of media when you have a lifetime of exposure and get even a basic level of education on comparing sources and other media literacy techniques. I live in Australia where the newspapers are long known for bias. A great example of bias at work is media coverage of the WGA (and now SAG, etc) strikes… all the big news organisations CNN, CBS, Fox, etc are owned by the companies the WGA are negotiating against … you’ve got a neat example of how these companies put their spin on an issue outside of the traditional US political fighting and where the left viewpoint/bias of most of them is now at odds with the corporate agenda and how painfully obvious the editorial biases are counter to that.