And if politics were about individuality and following your own way, I’d agree with you, but it isn’t. The art, the entire core concept of politics, lies in the ability to organize groups of people into voting blocs to improve a situation. The groups start small, gain momentum and followers, and given time and a few minor miracles, become major blocs or even political parties. I used to disparage the way the best politicians swayed the crowds to vote for this or against that, but I now realize that this is a powerful and effective talent, and if the politician is a good man, that gift can lead to truly great things.
And people should choose to study politics for two reasons. Number one, the viability and effectiveness of our government has always depended on a healthy, politically aware constituency who has at least some idea of what’s going on. Everyone is complaining nowadays about how the system is broken, how the American government is fucked, how the grand American experiment failed. I call bullshit. The system works fine. The game’s still on. It’s just that with attitudes like the one you mentioned, no one is paying attention.
I mean, how can you hold the attitude I quoted and then turn around and moan about the current administration? That administration is there now, because our administration fucked things up, and we let it happen, and it’s because we didn’t bother to concern ourselves with the facts. We didn’t know enough to get involved or even how to get involved. We let a total dipshit get elected and reelected, and now we’re paying the price. And as a conservative myself, I do mean “we.”
The second reason might sound a bit pretentious, but I firmly believe it: We owe it to the generations before this. Our predecessors built this country, and they got involved in government, and they handed it to us, and we sort of let the whole thing go to waste. I’m not talking about the democrats or the republicans being in power. I’m talking about the abysmal voting rate–except when there’s a candidate we truly love or loathe–the failure of so many Americans to name their congress members, and the way the whole political system has gone to rot. It’s not a conservative thing or liberal thing. It’s an American thing. From what I can see, many if not most of the other countries are much more politically aware than we are. They take an active interest in politics, and not just local politics either.
We were given this political system as a gift, and we messed it up. Call me pretentious and pie-in-the-sky, but it’s up to us to clean up our mess. And if we change our attitudes, learn about politics, and get involved, we eventually can do it, and in fact, we’d damned well better do it.
“Everyone is complaining nowadays” is shorthand for “I’m going to construct a straw man and just beat the holy snot out of it.” Everyone is not complaining about that, for one thing; there is absolutely no chance whatsoever you can show me a reliable survey demonstration that a majority of Americans believe the United States is irretrievably broken.
More importantly, however, what people say means nothing. What they DO is where their values truly lie. Your values have nothing to do with what comes out of your pie hole and everything to do with where you spend your money and your time. You’ll always get people complaining. People bitch endlessly about their jobs, usually even if they hold good jobs, but most people aren’t polishing their resumes right now. People bitch about everything. Everyone’s got a certain amount of complaining in them they need to release, and politics is just a convenient target everyone can agree on. It doesn’t mean people have lost their faith in their country as a whole.
I note the OP provides no evidence of who these political retards are. I don’t doubt there are some ignorant people out there, but the point of the OP seems to extend no further than “I am smart and most people are stupid.” Let me get you a hand on a stick so you can clap yourself on the back, Brainy McSmartypants.
Obviously I can’t assume you know dick about NY’s recent legislative shenanigans, since I don’t know where you live. But if you’ve had any clue, whatsoever, about how the business of politics works (or as it more often plays out, doesn’t work) within the State of New York, I think you might be a little less smug about assuming the only way to have a voice is to join a specific party.
Let me give you a little history here, asshole.
The first duty of the state legislature, in my mind, is to pass the state budget, to provide for the next year’s operation of all the state’s business. Out of the last 28 budgets, 2 were passed on time. At least one of those times the state budget was passed over 100 days late. With all the additional costs and expenses that the state incurred because it couldn’t access the general funds until the budget is passed. For that matter you had the state suing several local school districts because they hadn’t submitted their own budgets for the coming year - because they were waiting to see what degree of state aid they were going to get.
This is not the hallmark of a government that is working. Part of the reason for that is that the Legislative rules are set up to give all power in each House to either the Majority Leader, or the Speaker of the Assembly. The Dems have had the Assembly locked up for those past 28 years I’ve been talking about. The Republicans have had the Senate locked up until just this past January. This would result in the Senate and the Assembly each passing wildly different budgets, and then the reconciliation would occur behind closed doors, with the Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Governor hashing out some kind of bastard compromise.
And the rank and file in each house would then be presented a fait accompli. Which they would rubberstamp. At no time is the public allowed to see any of the nuts and bolts of the budget until each bill is passed, and especially the three men in a room negotiations must be kept from the public, at all costs.
But the Yellow-dog Dems and Republicans, in general, just keep sending the same idiots back to Albany.
Now, let’s look at this past year. In November the Dems were campaigning, among other things, based on the claim that if they won a majority in the State Senate they’d clean up the rules for the Senate, and allow for more voice from the various minority conferences within that chamber. This is, by no means, a perfect solution, but if they Senate changes its rules there’s some hope (faint, vague and probably whistling in the dark) that they might be able to shame Sheldon Silver into changing the rules for the Assembly.
In the end, while I was hugely skeptical of such a claim, I felt that the hope for change was such that I had to support it. If only so I could say, in the aftermath, “Look, you fuckers, the Dems care no more about fixing this shit than the Republicans who held the big stomping shoes before them in the Senate!” So I did vote for the Democratic party’s candidate for my state Senate seat. (He lost, btw, and I can’t repine about it - the Republican who won re-election has been one of the few assholes in Albany who has been fighting the good fight for reform for years. I’d still vote him Joe Rohrbach out, if I thought it would lead to change in the Legislative mess that is Albany, but I don’t have the poisonous hatred for him that I have for some of the Democratic leadership in Albany. Such as Sheldon “There’s no need for ballot referenda in NY, since the voice of the people is heard through their representatives in the Legislature” Silver.)
So, what happened with the budget this year? Was it all in the open, with a Democratic Assembly Speaker, a Democratic Senate Majority Leader, and a Democratic Governor?
Fuck no.
The goddam arrogant bastards didn’t even pass preliminary budgets in either fucking House because they said, since we’re all happy Democrats, we won’t have anything to argue about. And then went into their smoke-filled room to work out another lousy budget that ignores the economic reality facing the state with Wall Street having been clobbered so badly in the past year.
And the fuckers still couldn’t get it passed on time. Granted, it was only about a week late, but they missed the deadline even so!
Oh, I glossed over the drama from January. One of the things that the Governor was talking about doing while he did have the majority in both Houses (which I was glad to see) was that he’d explicitly make it legal for homosexual marriage within the state, instead of simply recognizing those marriages performed elsewhere. This was a huge stumbling block for a group of three or four Democratic Senators from the NYC area. The so-called Gang of Four was talking about caucusing with the Republicans to prevent such a perversion. In the end, come January, they did vote with the party. And stayed there long enough to pass an abortion of a budget that raised spending 10% while revenues were projected to be down 20%, and the latest figure seem to be pushing closer to 25%!
Then these same ahem principled politicians then decided that while bad budgets that lay the groundwork for economic ruin are fine, they couldn’t countenance the idea of homosexual marriage after all. So a pair of them started voting with the Republicans, who wanted their positions of power back.
And these bastards locked up the Legislature for weeks, doing nothing but sitting there making faces at each other, like some kind of hideous Our Gang revival show. In the meantime bills to support the budget that had already been passed were languishing, and the bastards were still planning to take their regularly scheduled summer break.
Eventually things got settled with the fainthearts from the Dems going back to the party. But I refuse to see where I should believe you when you tell me that either party is worth the powder it would take to blow them up, here in NYS.
Fuck you. They’re both a blight upon the land. The only politician who is willing to tell people the truth, right now, is David Paterson, and he’s being smeared almost daily in the press to make way for their preferred candidate this next Gubernatorial cycle. (I think it’s going to be Andrew Cuomo.*) So I doubt he’ll be a viable candidate come the day. So his ability to represent the Democrats is about nil, already.
There are people who are idiots about blaming the two major parties for everything. Then there are people who are looking at the situations in front of their faces and have some pretty rational reasons for thinking the two parties are a bunch of parasitic crooks. And of course, national parties are not always the same thing as local parties and vice versa.
*Paterson is being blamed in the Press, regularly, for all the Legislative shenanigans, the fiasco that was Caroline Kennedy’s “campaign” for her uncle’s Senate seat, and global warming it seems. I really have nothing against Andrew Cuomo, but it disgusts me to see the way the press is playing such personal games to allow their favored, and family-named, candidate to have a boost come the election.
The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, chose to give us an electoral system that made America a two-party state- despite their public lack of support for the entire concept of a political party.
Who are we to argue? They were infallible, you know.
Well, at least they ignored that radical loon Tom Paine, and labored mightily to ensure that full citizenship would be reserved for men of property and substance, who could be trusted to keep a keen and sober eye on the well-being of the Republic.
Coffee Cart Man: Hey buddy. You forgot your change.
Joe Moore: [Takes the change] Makes the world go round.
Bobby Blane: What’s that?
Joe Moore: Gold.
Bobby Blane: Some people say love.
Joe Moore: Well, they’re right, too. It is love. Love of gold.[right]-- Heist[/right]
Politics has always been a game of the ruling ‘classes’ (in various contexts), but with the advent of widespread democratic-style governance the manipulation of public perception and opinion has become a science, and obfuscation of fact versus speculation is an art form. The ultimate goal of the application of political science isn’t to select the optimum leaders or to provide the electorate with all possible options, but to provide a stable system of continued governance capable of responding to public needs and remaining composed against conflict and catastrophe. (This is actually the reason that the American federal electoral system–and by extension many state and municipal governments–are designed to reinforce a two party dichotomy of political options.) To that end, democracies and republics run under representative democratic principles are only as good as the collective level of comprehension and critical thinking skills of the electorate, and unfortunately what I see of the general population–even highly educated professionals–is not encouraging.
As for politicians themselves, they are as much a tool of the process as anything. No doubt most politicians enter public service with the sincere belief in providing valuable leadership, and most are massively overwhelmed by the shear amount of knowledge they would need to make informed decisions, resulting in their dependence upon advisers and lobbyists of variable quality and integrity. The underrated film The Candidate illustrates this very effectively, as Robert Redford starts out as an idealistic champion who is reluctantly drawn into candidacy by a political fixer and ends up mouthing slogans and winning an election but losing any sense of what he originally intended to accomplish. Politicians are, after all, just men and women with very human limitations and failings.
As for complaints about the two major parties being “pretty much the same anyway,” this is obviously not true but from the standpoint of one for whom neither party represents the ideals and intentions it is effectively the case that one becomes effectively disenfranchised by not having an option to vote for, and therefore defaults to voting decisions against the more objectionable candidate or option. Lacking any kind of public voice, even one that is ultimately compromised in coalition-style governance more common to European democracies, makes many would-be voters disinterested and dismissive of the processing, and not without justification.
As bright as they were, they really dropped the ball on not accounting for the inevitable emergence of parties,specifically two major parties in a winner take all system. It didn’t take long for them to correct their mistake in the Constitution. Which just goes to show how natural parties are to our kind of government since they evolved organically despite the structure itself.
It’s so common for people to point out when something they opposed was also opposed by the founders, but this is incredibly selective. They did live in an entirely different cultural world and supported loads of things that we now universally find to be all kinds of outdated and immoral.
It’s still a mistake to misunderstand the functionality of parties. It’s too easy to be turned off by anything monolithic and bureaucratic since we all know that we are individuals, but we are blind to the absolute importance of this kind of political categorization in our system.
I’ve seen some specific criticisms of some of my points, but I don’t think anyone has proven that people aren’t in fact politically retarded.
Why does that have justification? Obviously we can’t have enough parties to represent everyones exact ideals and intentions, so we split according to the core most ideologies on which all others are built and we debate internally then externally. It is true that each of us is only one voice and has only that much political pull, but if someone doesn’t want to try to bring the party closest to them closer to their own perspective then they only want to jump to the head of the line while everyone else compromises. That first step of party organization is just as important as the general election.
If you don’t get your way in the party platform then sorry, maybe next time if you work hard enough to get people to agree with you…feel free to either abstain from voting or chose the one you are most comfortable with. Don’t act like the party system is the problem just because your perspective didn’t have the pull that the you wanted. I am so far off from a lot of my parties main positions, all I can do is hope that I can help them see things the way I do. That’s the game.
My point is that a two-party system is by its very nature undemocratic. Under our system, if you’re against abortion you must also be for easing restrictions on firearms. If you favor limited government spending in general you must also want massive defense spending.
Obviously, it’s better than a one-party system- but it’s not better than anything else. The problem with our system of government is that it virtually assures us of two-party politics.
This assumes that there are only two diametrically opposing sides to the “core most ideologies,” which is like saying I’m free to choose either Pepsi or Coke, when what I really want is iced tea. There have been in the past and continue to be many positions on which the major parties of the day did not reflect even major options or the interests of the majority. Before the Civil Rights movement, for instance, neither party embraced tolerance or strongly courted minorities, effectively making non-whites a largely disenfranchised electorate, even when they were the majority of ostensibly legitimate voters. Assuming that every issue has only two sides is a logical fallacy.
The inherent assumption of democracy is that the majority is right, even when it clearly isn’t. On many issues, the majority of the electorate isn’t even qualified to have an informed opinion, which doesn’t stop people from the barbershop to the McLaughin Group from making obtuse asses of themselves.
Did it ever occur to you that people may think congress sucks, but that their own representative is okay? Everyone hates pork, but they love it when their own guy brings the bacon home.
Incumbency has huge advantages in American politics. For one thing, both parties have been gerrymandering districts like crazy over the past couple of decades, and have managed to split their constituents up into like-minded groups who will never vote for the other side no matter how lousy things are. Very few seats in congress are truly competitive, and this is a big part of the reason why. In addition, incumbents get free news coverage, they get franking privileges they use to send out campaign material, they get big donations for their campaigns from lobbyists and activists, and campaign finance reform makes it harder for non-billionaires to compete against the perks of incumbency.
You know, for all the talk of how ‘stupid’ people are, the participants in this thread would do well to realize that true enlightenment comes when you stop assuming everyone else is evil, or stupid, or uneducated. That’s the lazy way out. Wall Street is evil, bankers are evil, insurance companies are evil (or on the other side, lawyers are evil, unions are evil)…
Who needs to think about the complex forces at play that drive behavior when you can simply create an enemies list?
No shit, Sherlock. When I said that everyone is complaining nowadays, I meant it in the way that most people mean it when they say it. I mean that the complaining is widespread. Maybe you’d like to check out a few political messageboards? Actually ask a bunch of people what they think? Perhaps there’s something I can use to let you know when I’m speaking figuratively, like a blinking red light attached to your computer? A cowbell, maybe?
Very true, and in a country where the voting turnout rate usually hovers around 50% for presidential elections and far lower for midterm elections, I’d say you’ve pretty much proved my point.
No, you’re missing the point still. Civil rights wasn’t a party feature because obviously that’s not where most people’s heads were. If there had been a civil rights party it’s not like they would have had a chance to win before the measure was popular enough to even be in a major party platform, in fact it would have only served to split the more liberal vote and hurt the party that was closer to getting there. Of course eventually what happened was that the demand for the measure got large enough that they were able to make it a cornerstone of one party, and now it is a cornerstone of both parties. We evolved and that’s where we’re at.
Once again you are trying to jump ahead as if there isn’t debate and compromise going on in the parties before the general election even begins. You act like you never have a chance to vote for the position you want, but you do. It’s called a primary, vote for the candidate who supports your position, run yourself if you have to. If that doesn’t work, but your position still has significant support, then campaign to to include it on the party platform. Of course that’s too much work for some people who think the process begins and ends with the general election. The people who complain about not having enough choices are the same ones who didn’t participate to decide what the choices were.
You seem to be mistaking my disagreement with your position with a lack of comprehension in regard to it. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Nonetheless, you continue to gloss over the point that within the existing system only a limited number of political views–not infrequently, two positions that are relatively close to each other in comparison to the general spectrum of opinions–which do not reflect the will of the electorate. The American involvement in Viet Nam and Southeast Asia is a perfect example of an effort that was never widely supported by the electorate majority, was opposed by the electorate through two different Presidential administrations that were almost polar opposites, and yet, was still pursued vigorously by the representatives of both major parties.
You suggest that “You act like you never have a chance to vote for the position you want, but you do. It’s called a primary, vote for the candidate who supports your position, run yourself if you have to.” In fact, primaries are rarely more than a trading ground for political favors, and the average person has neither the time nor ability to effectively present himself or herself as a viable candidate for public office, the vocation of which has become a highly specialized pursuit almost exclusive to people who already have strong political ties and a heck of a lot of money. Essentially what you are saying here, if I can expand my original analogy, is that I can have more than Pepsi and Coke; I just need to travel to Sri Lanka, collect my own tea leaves, oxidize them, dry them, package them, bring them back, and then boil them in water. It is my choice, of course; if I don’t want or can’t afford to go to that amount of trouble, I can just drink my Pepsi. Or Coke. After all, I have a choice, don’t I?
Indeed this is what drives me bonkers. The “Throw out the bums!” chants are everywhere around here right now. Everyone is tired and fed up with when who we have in congress.
…as we reelect our congressman to his ninth term. :smack:
Official independent parties tend to be idiots, because they mostly run candidates for the highest office available, such as Senator, Governor, and President. Unless you’re in Maine, Vermont, or Minnesota, good luck with that. Try having an independent Sheriff or state house representative first.
I think you’re giving people far too much credit. I meet a scary number of adults who don’t seem to know congress exists, and think the president is essentially a dictator. I can’t tell you how often I hear people going on about how “Obama is gonna legalize X or outlaw X” as if he just speaks it into or out of existence. And X is just as often as not a state issue. I met a guy the other day who assured me that Obama was personally crafting Arizona’s concealed carry statutes. Which would instantly be law when he was done, by very nature of having been dictated by Obama.