Why I hate the Left AND the Right

The BBQ Pit
21

Oh my stars and garters, whatever gave you the idea that I was utterly impartial? No, I am extremely partial, I’m partial to having some redneck walk into the capital building and mow down congress while it’s in session, so they can’t blame the muslims or me.

I am far from being a centrist though. I am part of the “Extreme Moderate Fringe”, also known as the silent majority, the people that don’t just pick a side because we need a team to root for. Unfortunately for those of us that they refer to as “most people”, it’s just impossible to elect candidates that reflect our opinions in a two-party system. But of course we aren’t doing a whole lot about all those unopposed local elections, so I suppose we’ve got no room to bitch.

Anyway, something I started to realize recently is that my views aren’t that fringe. The only thing that makes me non-conformist is that I actually pick my views a la carte, and don’t choose a candidate who is a warmonger just because he’s also anti-abortion.

The truth is that most of the people in this country pick their candidates the same way they pick their football teams, by the color of their jersey, or which quarterback is cuter. Then they pretend like they actually care, or identify with the parties just so they aren’t seen to be fucking idiots later on after arguing so vociferously. Little do they know, they still look like fucking idiots.

As to whether I am up or down, forward or backward, I’d need your coordinates in order to answer that because it’s all relative to your position and orientation.

As for your moral equivalency bullshit, it’s not like Clinton wasn’t pursuing a policy of hegemony while he was in office. Come now, really, you act like there isn’t a consistent foreign policy that pursues American dominance regardless of who is in office.

Really, what I care about is the government leaving me the fuck alone. I don’t trust people I don’t know to legislate my day to day activities. The less they do to bug me the better. I’m working on taking care of me, and mine, and if they can stay the fuck out of that, I’m better off and so are they. If only they spent all that money they are throwing at Iraq on Biodiesel and Hybrid car research, we wouldn’t even NEED that fucking oil by the time we can get it out of the ground effectively.

So please, just because you love your party doesn’t mean that it loves you. It also doesn’t mean that those of us who don’t choose to be a part of an organization that doesn’t give a rats ass about us, don’t have a valid opinion, and are doing it merely to be “non-conformist”.

Love,
Shnoogy
P.S. Some more
P.P.S. Why don’t liberals have a sense of humor, and why don’t conservatives have a sense of humanity?

22

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you don’t like the left because they don’t do enough, and you hate the right because we’re all fascist kitty-kickers. Is it really that hard to see where you would fit into one of the two? :confused:

23

No, duffer, it’s because you are puppy-kickers. Sheesh, when, oh when will you stop misrepresenting the left? :slight_smile:

24

By the same token, can’t we please just admit that absolutely NONE of the major issues fall on one side or the other?

Pro-lifers can’t acknowlegde that a blastocyst is NOT a person, so conservatives have to take a staunch “no abortions for anyone at anytime” standpoint. Meanwhile liberals can’t acknowledge that, yes, at some point in the pregnancy, that does in fact become a person, so liberals take a staunch “it’s a woman’s body, and she can do whatever she wants with it” stance.

Gun control? Can we please have liberals acknowledge that yes, some people enjoy hunting, eat what they hunt and can handle having a rifle in their home. By the same token, can converatives shut the hell up about banning assault rifles and semi-automatics; if you need one of these to take down a deer, you should take up another hobby.

Welfare? Conservatives? A word please. Some people fall on hard times and don’t have rich family to help them out. They need a helping hand. Liberals? Some people are in the position they are because they royally fucked up due to their own terrible choices. At some point, they have to swim (or sink) on their own.

I could go on. Everybody is afraid of the goddamn slippery slope, and as a result, we tend to not make compromises toward the center, which is where the appropriate answer likely lies.

25

So you’re saying we can’t grow and expand our horizons? I reject that out of hand as it doesn’t fit my world view and doesn’t give me ammo to hate women and children. And minorities. And gays. And baby seals. And the French. Well, OK. Most people hate the French anyway, but that’s beside the point. :smiley:

26

First of all, I appreciate your calm and level headed response, and apologize for the angry tone of my post. But…

What makes you think that everyone who is a registered democrat is also a mindless drone? Or, for that matter, what makes you think that everyone who agrees with one party on some issues, another party on some issues, neither party on some issues, and sometimes votes for candidates from multiple different parties, can not be a registered member of a party?
I’m a registered democrat. I make no aoplogies for that. But, I formulate my opinion on each issue separately and uniquely. I then (in theory, at least… I’m not claiming I live out this ideal in all cases) choose which major candidate is CLOSER to my positions, and I vote for that one. If my attitude was “well, neither candidate is perfect, thus, I’ll vote for no one”, well, then I’d never vote for anyone, and why bother living in a democracy in that case?

And in the most recent election, in particular, I was VERY happy with the choice I made, because I happen to think that Bush is a truly awful president of historical proportions. I maybe be wrong about that, and I’m certain that there are intelligent individuals who disagree, but I CERTAINLY didn’t look at the last election as yet another situation of “oh, look at the two major parties, the demicans and republicrats. There sure is no difference between their candidates.” And quite frankly, I don’t understand how anyone could.

On the other hand, in the California gubernatorial recall election, I didn’t vote for Cruz Bustamante, despite the fact that he was the democratic candidate, because I had good reason to believe that he was a corrupt idiot.
My point is: it’s possible to be an independent, freewilled, intelligent, aware, rational and savvy individual, and still decide that your interests and opinions are enough closer to one of the major parties than the other, that you become a member of that party. That doesn’t mean that you swear allegiance to that party and all it stands for.

27

At some point in the pregnancy, the fetus does, in fact, become a person. Where, precisely, that occurs is difficult to assess. I myself happen to believe that it occurs when the fetus becomes viable to survive outside the mother, but I can’t say I’m 100% happy with that viewpoint.

Wait, what’s that, I’m a pro-choice liberal, but I’m NOT frothing at the mouth and absolute about it? Holy frijoles!

Some people enjoy hunting, eat what they hunt, and can handle having a rifle in their home. Happy now? Can you please stop the pointless caricaturing now?

Why, you make it sound so simple! We’ll just ask people to check a little box entitled “YES I royally fucked up due to my own terrible choices” or “NO I did not royally fuck up due to my own terrible choices”. Then we’ll know! (Oh, but wait, what about the CHILDREN of people who royally fucked up. We don’t want THEM to suffer. But then if we offer welfare to mothers who have children, they just start punching out kids by the boatload, and then we have welfare queens. Ack!)

Again, my point is twofold:
(a) barring a lunatic fringe on either side, people DON’T have these extreme cut and dried positions you’re ascribing to them.
(b) Standing there saying “if only everyone acknowledged that the other position was sometimes right, we could all hold hands and sing on the hillsides in perfect harmony. Aren’t you partisan shmucks lucky there are independents like me to point it out to you?” isn’t actually going to accomplish anything, because any thinking individual already realizes that’s the case, and anyone who actually IS a partisan lunatic won’t care. All it will do is cause me to go off and start ranting at you (quite unfairly, perhaps), and then afterwards I’ll feel guilty, and the world will be that much uglier.

28

I used to listen to Rush on a daily basis when he gave political opinion, injected humor and opened debate on a head-to-the-front format for Dems. Then, a few years back he started railing about how “undecideds” were phony and brain-dead for not seeing elections in a black and white light. As a conservative, I find myself in full agreement with your post. Maybe not much else, but it’s something to celebrate! :slight_smile:

29

“With an enemy you know where he stands, but with a neutral, who knows?” -Zapp Branigan

30

I don’t think that, I just think that measuring one’s political opinion by a single spacial dimension is about as narrow-minded as one can get. Personally I was just ranting at a bunch of shit that annoys the fuck out of me. If it applies to you then I was ranting about you. If it doesn’t I wasn’t ranting about you. I was ranting about stereotypes that exist.

I disagree that voting when there isn’t a worthy candidate has any value. Maybe if more people showed up to the polls, DIDN’T vote for the president, but voted for everything else, that would say something to the electioneers. Personally I am far more interested in local politics, and I am involved in local politics such as I am able to be. I know that our system was set up hierarchically, and if our local representative isn’t representing us, well that’s as much our own fault as theirs. If a state senate or city council district is about 4000 people, then the candidate should conceivably make every effort possible to meet every single one of their constituents during the campaign and throughout their term, and we should expect nothing less.

Personally, I think that at the top levels of power the party system is a farce. I think that the moment Kerry won the primaries, most people knew that Bush had won. I never met a die-hard Kerry supporter during the primaries. The two candidates weren’t different enough IMO. I voted for Kerry out of supreme guilt honestly. I probably should have voted for a third party. Not for it’s candidate mind you, but for the party itself.
Erek

31

Fucking Neutrons sitting in the nucleus making sure the atom is stable. Goddamn I hate them.

32

:eek: There are people out there like me! I don’t feel so alone anymore. <sniffle> :slight_smile:

33

That’s the point it isn’t simple. But read any post here on welfare, and there will be two sides. One that abhors the mere mention that some people on welfare deserve to be in the dire position that they are in, and the other that says people need to sink or swim.

I don’t want to turn someone else’s OP into a welfare debate. I guess my main point is railing against the slippery slope. I think people tend to grab one side or another for fear that giving in, even a little bit, will cause the entire issue to fall down on them. But, in all likelihood, the appropriate answer is somewhere on the slope.

That being said, I’m not non-partisan. I’m a registered Democrat. But, I will vote for Republicans.

34

In the last sentence, replace “will” with “am willing to”. I realized it doesn’t have the intended meaning when typed without the inflection on the “will”.

And, in the first sentence, add appropriate punctuation.

Would you agree with my sentiment on the fear of the slippery slope impeding compromise?

35

I think anyone who cannot see any difference between Republicans and Democrats knows so little about politics that the rest of their opinions are for shit.

36

Boo 2 Party System.
Yay Parliamentary Democracy.

:smiley:

37

Im not sure if that was aimed at me, but I agree with that. I think both parties tend to get things wrong, but for different reasons. I think on individual issues, one party tends to be closer to the appropriate answer than the other, but the right always seems to be to the right of the answer and the left to the left of it. The “answer” of course, being “my opinion” :slight_smile: .

38

Sometimes I imagine it as a scales of balance, and I feel like it pretty well evens out to maintain the status quo, that’s why we are getting such even splits in Presidential elections all the time. And you have to run around from one side to the other otherwise it drops. I’d say this happens because they are both half of the same ethos, and it just cannot be done with one or the other. If people would just unfreeze out of their terror and get their footing on the scale they could walk around just fine without fearing the slippery slope, but it’s because everyone is frozen in terror that maintaining that balance requires so much work.

39

Generally, politicians are wankers of the first degree. We know that; they know we know that. The trick is to spot - and elect - the politician who is the exception - we had a Pit thread a while back about the importance of character in a politician.

40

I would like to see more youth in the government. There was clearly a paradigm change in society, and they seem to not have gotten the memo. I think younger blood would be more attached to what’s actually happening right now. I don’t think that an old man is necessarily more qualified than a younger candidate, just had more time to grow pompous. These old politicians are in touch with the populace in the same way that Hollywood actors are, from a position of skewed celebrity. I think we need to interject some young blood that grew up around the internet more, and the cold war less.