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No, no. No. Democrats use, lie and abuse the middle and lower classes just to get votes. They promise crap, they create division and tension along racial, eco
by rebootthesystem 11y ago
No, no. No.
Democrats use, lie and abuse the middle and lower classes just to get votes. They promise crap, they create division and tension along racial, economic, and any other line they can find. It's a playbook right out of the best South American dictatorships. The masses vote for them based on stupid shit like "Hope and Change" and then they get nothing. Frankly, I don't understand why these people keep voting for them. Look at what's happening to the black community under a black president. If there was ever an indication that Democrat's mode of operation is to use the masses for votes there you have it, playing live right in front of on us TV nearly every day.
The only good thing about Democrats are some of the approaches to social issues. Things like gays are not evil and the war on drugs is stupid.
Republicans? Crap. The religious right represents delusion and insanity. They too, when you produce a few key words, will vote for you at the push of a button. They manipulate a different set of audiences for different reasons.
The only good thing about Republicans is the leaning towards fiscal responsibility, low taxes and low spending.
A good moderate Libertarian will be for small government, low taxes, a moderate liberal social stance, fiscal responsibility, not fucking with the world with armament and getting the hell out of our lives, homes, businesses and bedrooms.
I for one am glad to see someone like Rand Paul making the moves he is making. He is smart. He knows that in this country it is still impossible to win as a Libertarian due to the dominance the main parties are granted by the electoral college system. So, he sits as a Republican. Yet, it is obvious he is not a bible thumping Republican. He is a Libertarian, there's no doubt about that. The chances of him getting the nomination are probably not good, but you never know.
If voters just stopped to think for a moment to realize that the average politician is not much more than a bad used car salesman working hard to use and abuse them every day for their own gains we might just have a chance to start doing things differently. That's a tall order. How do you convince a bible thumper to vote for someone that isn't going to push their buttons and won't demonize gays or other groups? How do you convince a union leader to have their membership vote for someone who isn't going to promise free goodies and favors to their membership?
Probably won't happen. But that's the root of the problem in American politics. We are being pulled to the right or left by a process of buying votes. Those of us in the middle who see things for what they are and really want to do the right thing for the country and future generations have no voice in this because the big parties and the electoral college system push us down into the noise. Voting Libertarian in California or Texas is wasting your vote.
The electoral college, for all it's virtues, has created a system where the party that should be in power right now has no chance at having a voice. Collectively Libertarians are in the many millions across the nation. However, our system of government is designed to pretend that every state is a homogeneous voting block, allocating all votes to one or the other party, which is utterly ridiculous in today's reality.
While I really wish for a Libertarian shift in our politics I fear this is almost impossible to achieve given the realities of how the game is designed and played.
- pluma 11y agoWhat are you disagreeing about, exactly? The European "right-wing" is socialist by American standards and the American "liberals" are right-wing by European standards. Heck, the only reasons Americans think "small government" is the solution (and that it has to be an all-or-nothing decision) is that the government they have is bullshit. You can have regulations without having a "nanny state" that dictates every aspect of your life. You can have privacy and welfare and socialised health care and various other kinds of good things without "socialism". Americans, generally speaking, don't care about other people. Personal responsibility is the highest good: if you made it, it was your personal achievements that got you to where you are; if you end up in a bad situation, it was your own failings and bad decisions that got you there. But that has nothing to do with liberalism or capitalism. In fact, it's quite anti-liberal. Without regulation, capitalism eats its children: you get monopolies and oligopolies, innovation stagnates and new competitors are either acquired or driven out of the market; you also provide no incentive for moral responsibility to the consumers. Randian "libertarianism" is deeply flawed and sociopathic.
- rebootthesystem 11y agoI think the problem with the way you are seeing things is what I call the "Star Trek View of the Universe". This is where all Vulcans are the same, all Klingons are the same, all <insert planet> are the same. Example: > Americans, generally speaking, don't care about other people. That's not even close to being true. A cursory google search reveals that the US is at the top of the list of nations engaged in charitable donations, foreign aid and other metrics of generosity that clearly indicate that we do care about other people. And, no, Americans are not a homogeneous herd that thinks and behaves the same way. And that's why the problems and the solutions are sometimes very hard to sort out. Yet I'll take this any day to some of what goes on in many nations around the globe.
- foldr 11y ago>Yet, it is obvious he is not a bible thumping Republican. He actually does a fair bit of Bible-thumping: http://www.hrc.org/2016RepublicanFacts/rand-paul http://www.hrc.org/2016RepublicanFacts/rand-paul