Voters continue to support the same spoon-fed nonsense while claiming the don’t like politicians. Well, if you don’t like it, then get off your butt and do something about it. Voting D or R simply confirms the theory of insanity. Repeating the same action expecting a different result is nuts.

One example, people perpetually complain about Congress and the Senate. But, they will continue to vote in the incumbent. Oxymoron much?

If people don’t like politics the way it has evolved, then they should stop voting for the same empty suits and make a difference. Our choices are limited because we allow them to be. If the repressed people of Egypt can topple a corrupt system like Mubarek’s, it must be possible or our citizenry to make changes as well.

Blaming politicians is an easy way out that absolves voters of the choices they make.

My 2 copper, no offense intended.

And I’ll also disagree with on believing that people who do not share your beliefs are evil. In some cases you are correct, but only when there is an honest attempt to communicate and devise a way to live in the same country with the greatest level of peace. When established politicians state that I am not fit to be in this country, and there is no compromise possible, I stop trying to play nice with them. Failing to do so is the path that Greece walked with the Golden Dawn. Read the article in the BBC today if you haven’t been following that decent into hell.

And, as an aside, the New Jersey definition of an honest politician? He stays bought.

I “made up” a third party on that day, and I still adhere to it when people ask me what my political leanings are. I’m a member of the disgustocrats. I basically hate every politician that’s funded by any kind of “machine” as you describe them, be it political or corporate. I like government – I’m no anarchist – but the system we have here has been terminally polluted by campaign finance laws that allow large corporations to buy politicians for life. Every time I hear people debating about this candidate or that candidate, it’s all I can do not to laugh and ask them if they really think there’d be a large difference between the two in office. There hasn’t been for a long, long time, since about Ike, when he warned of the military industrial complex. There will be more wars. There will be less regulation of large corporations and other moneymakers (banks, etc). There will be no meaningful campaign finance reform or control put on lobbying. It doesn’t matter who’s in power. Those fundamentals will hold true.

I hate to be a problem-bringer and not a solution-provider, but this one is beyond me. I can’t stand how things are, but I can’t see a non-violent way (and I’m not advocating violence here, just saying that I don’t see a non-violent way) to change things. Those in power will maintain it through the machine, as you put in your post. Beyond that, it’s all theater.

If you haven’t watched it before, there’s a great old clip (about a decade old now, I think) of Jon Stewart on Crossfire. He starts by lampooning the two hosts for “hurting America” by pushing theater as substance. It gets very, very interesting from there. You should check it out.

Stubborn

It’s not like I endorsed the Tea Party, I mentioned them in passing.

Sometimes I swear people ascribe value laden judgments to what I say that weren’t there except in the eye of the beholder.

The truth here is I woke up yesterday, and asked myself, “What is the best way to piss off 90% of my readers. Oh, I know, write about politics three weeks before the election of the next King of America.”

The key points I was trying to make were, first, that anyone who believes that politicians actually care about something more than obtaining, increasing and maintaining their personal power are not thinking things through, second that I believe it is criminally stupid to act like people who do not share your personal beliefs are evil, and third, that if you care about your cause whatever it may be, get involved in politics at your local level.

The overriding core message is, take personal responsibility for your own actions, and use your own experience in face-to-face personal interactions with people to develop your understanding of reality, NOT what you see on TV or read on the internet. People are not soundbytes, they are people. As soon as something looks simple, is fed to you in an easily understood package, it’s a lie. Or at best a gross exagerration.

I remember I took a questionnaire around the time of the last Australian government elections that was aimed at placing you in a grid in terms of where the parties site (liberal/conservative on one axis and socialist/capitalist in the other axis those aren’t the technical names for them but what I remember them as). We have 3 major parties in Australia (that’s dumping a couple of parties together – but they’ve been a coalition since before I was born). Basically there was nothing that represented my view and on the scale the Liberal an Labour parties were basically right next to each other in the conservative/capitalist section with very little different. Greens were different, but they don’t have the numbers to take office (although they do/and have ended up with the balance of power). Then if you look at the major polices, or approaches to how they handle difficult situations they largely approach it from the same tack with different wording and ways of promoting it.

This set up leads to what happened in our last election… that the people voted and they said ‘meh’ (I created a nice little comic at the time over at my short-lived blog gnomish truth) – the two parties ended up with equal number of seats the the government had to form a minority government by cobbling together with a bunch of independent and greens candidates. We ended up with a government that basically can’t get anything through the parliament (much like the Obama/Congress setup I guess) – because they have to appease so many groups just to get it through.

For me it’s largely just lead to disillusionment with the system. It doesn’t seem to matter who I vote for because it by and large isn’t going to change anything and they don’t really represent me any way. I still vote (not just because it is mandatory here) and I still take care to examine the policies and what is said before elections, but it does really feel like I’m choosing between the very very very very slightly lesser of two evils.

The thing I hate most is the ‘tow the party line’ thing as you brought up. The system here in Australia is that you vote for your local candidate and they end up in parliament if they get enough votes but there really isn’t any real connection to your local constituency such that they can have a different view than the party presents. Recent events here have really shown how much of the system is driven by back room dealing between the power brokers of the parties.

On a different note – I am of the view that you would get much better performance out of them as individuals if you restricted the amount of time that they can serve in office. Restrict them to either one or two terms – then they are not just interested in getting reelected, but might actually show an interest in long term projects to help their constituents. It often seems that they just spend four years trying to get themselves reelected, rather that actually working through any of the outstanding problems.

Not that there will be much change. Wealth and media concentration guarantees that there is very little that can be done to move things. Representational democracy is new and was developed at a much smaller scale. Even back in the ‘golden days’ people weren’t sure what this all meant. Read “The Freedoms That We Lost” by Barbara Clarke Smith for a good overview of how the concept of representation, and what the vote actually meant, evolved through the colonial era.

Read “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis for a more chilling view of the next election.