The problem with American politics

D_Gunther Snotpole

Account Disabled
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
Posts
13,632
Media
0
Likes
73
Points
193
I also feel the main problem with US politics today is the legacy of G.W. Bush and his "you are either with us or against us" policy. The right wing is uncompromising and will chip away at any policy put forth by anyone who has a different point of view than the white male heteronormative ideology that has ruled in Washington since our slave-whipping forefathers sailed from England and Europe to the New World and took this land away from the natives.
I agree, but I think the statement is stronger and truer when you end with "chip away at any policy put forth by anyone."
The Republicans, and especially the Tea Party, are curiously like two-year-olds still trapped in their infantile megalomania.
They want what they want, period.
And mostly they want affirmation of half-remembered antique emotional 'truths' that were never true in the first place.

There's much more flexibility shown by the Democrats.
Unfortunately, when you're facing a cohort of two-year-olds, flexibility seems no better than sloppy irresolution.
Which may also be in the mix. ;-)
 

Who_Dun_It

Just Browsing
Joined
Apr 4, 2010
Posts
218
Media
0
Likes
0
Points
51
You shouldn't be depressed. You nailed the state of American politics right on the head with that post.

I think that's what is so depressing about it it's like the politicians don't know what we might actually want, or just don't give a damn and are willing to cram what they want down our unwilling gullets......the tea-baggers in particular it would seem.
 

phillyhangin

Experimental Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2008
Posts
207
Media
3
Likes
19
Points
103
Location
Philadelphia, PA
Sexuality
60% Gay, 40% Straight
Gender
Male
What we must have, if this experiment called democracy is to survive, is an informed electorate.
Exactly.

Too many people it seems, both in America and abroad, would rather have pat answers handed to them than spend the time gathering information, thinking about the topic, and arriving at an informed decision. There are many reasons for this tendency - people are overworked, people don't know where to find the information they need or they get overwhelmed by the amount of information out there, people are just lazy - but as long as the tendency to seek easy, pre-packaged answers exists in a majority of the population, dogma (political or otherwise) will win out.

The solution is not to teach people what to think, but how to think for themselves. In other words, don't give people answers, give them the tools they need to discover the answers. Much of our eductional system, with its emphasis on "teaching for the test," is to blame; this is not the fault of the teachers, btw, but a systemic problem due to the emphasis on rote memorization. Sure, memorizing facts allows you to answer questions on a standardized test (which is all some people care about), but unless those facts are placed within a larger context, true understanding of the meaning of those facts is lacking.

As the saying goes, give a man a fish, he'll eat for today; teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for the rest of his life. Give a student an answer, he'll pass the test today; teach a student to find the answers, and he'll learn for the rest of his life.

Intellectual curiosity - it's a good thing!
 
Last edited:

joyboytoy79

Sexy Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2006
Posts
3,686
Media
32
Likes
61
Points
193
Location
Washington, D.C. (United States)
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
There's a pretty simple reason for the flight of the centrist in Washington (and in most localities in the country, for that matter).

When the center is well represented, the only difference between candidates becomes the D or R behind their names. Staunch Rs or Ds already know who they're going to vote for, so their voices become less important. Meanwhile, the Us (Undecideds) need to look to less substantive issues in order to make up their minds. Issues such as "character" and "family values" become central. Now those staunch Ds and Rs become agitated, and start to defect to the other side. In an effort to stop the flow, the centrists start to pander to the "base." The Ds are happy. The Rs are happy. The Us still want all the fluff. And -voila!- we have the current extremist nightmare.

The two-party system is wretched. It forces an oscillation from center to right to left and back to center. Very little gets done. The best solution I can think of is to ban party politics. Make individuals run on their own platforms. Of course, the staunch Ds and Rs will never go for this. They make too much money off of the chaos.
 

Jason

Superior Member
Verified
Gold
Joined
Aug 26, 2004
Posts
15,616
Media
50
Likes
4,782
Points
433
Location
London (Greater London, England)
Verification
View
Sexuality
90% Gay, 10% Straight
Gender
Male
And mostly they want affirmation of half-remembered antique emotional 'truths' that were never true in the first place.

All nations have such myths. Such myths are not usefully considered either true or untrue - rather they are a nation's collective way of creating an identity.

They can be incredibly positive and helpful. In the UK the "myth" of the Royal Family is one such, and can trigger united national outpourings of grief (death of Princess Di; death of the Queen Mother) or joy (Charles/Di wedding, now William/Kate wedding and extra bank holiday). They great thing is the national unity. They start to go wrong when a nation's political parties begin to espouse different myths, and that IMO is tending to happen in US politics. It happened in the UK in the Thatcher age (by contrast Blair, Brown and Cameron/Clegg have avoided the worst excesses).

At their most negative they become a source of two opposing identities. In Northern Ireland we have incompatible myths where each side defines itself against the other. Each side feels hurt by the other, and each feels resentful. The Battle of the Boyne (1682) was clearly fought yesterday and both sides are still smarting from the divisions it created.
 

B_VinylBoy

Sexy Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2007
Posts
10,363
Media
0
Likes
68
Points
123
Location
Boston, MA / New York, NY
Sexuality
90% Gay, 10% Straight
Gender
Male
The two-party system is wretched. It forces an oscillation from center to right to left and back to center. Very little gets done. The best solution I can think of is to ban party politics. Make individuals run on their own platforms. Of course, the staunch Ds and Rs will never go for this. They make too much money off of the chaos.

IMHO, I don't think banning party politics would do anything. All these people would do is strip the titles, but the same alliances would form under a different label that isn't punishable by the current laws as they stand. The reason they do this is due to the money and campaign financing as we all know. However, if there were strict limits as to what a politician could spend during an electoral campaign (along with the proper reforms to our electoral process to keep such a thing balanced and transparent to everyone) it would help to balance out the voices and provide those with other views a chance to be heard.

Alas, that would be viewed as "big government" and the rabid, anti-government ideologues would wet their pants over it.
 

lucky8

Expert Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2006
Posts
3,623
Media
0
Likes
187
Points
193
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
Then provide some actual examples of leftist extremism.

Health insurance takeover and adding over $2 trillion to our national debt in just 2 years to name a couple. These are extreme, but of course, no one here would ever admit these as being extreme because, like I said, it's a matter of perspective...and your perspective is anything done by liberals is never extreme...I have a feeling your response will exemplify my OP perfectly...

You know why they need to raise the debt ceiling right?...to pay interest on our current debt...does this make any sense to anyone? Because it is completely irrational and unsustainable. This cannot be argued.
 
Last edited:

B_VinylBoy

Sexy Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2007
Posts
10,363
Media
0
Likes
68
Points
123
Location
Boston, MA / New York, NY
Sexuality
90% Gay, 10% Straight
Gender
Male
Health insurance takeover and adding over $2 trillion to our national debt in just 2 years to name a couple. These are extreme, but of course, no one here would ever admit these as being extreme because, like I said, it's a matter of perspective...and your perspective is anything done by liberals is never extreme...I have a feeling your response will exemplify my OP perfectly...

The health insurance takeover was in motion long before Obama proposed a Health Care bill that you didn't like. Decades and decades of deregulation by many different administrations, lawmakers and crooked politicians from various political affiliations lead to this. Trying to use the dreaded "Obamacare" as an example of "leftist extremism" is disingenuous and short sighted.

I mean, damn... you could of at least said the Weather Underground if you wanted a real example of leftist extremism.
 
Last edited:

citr

Experimental Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2009
Posts
282
Media
0
Likes
7
Points
53
Health insurance takeover and adding over $2 trillion to our national debt in just 2 years to name a couple. These are extreme, but of course, no one here would ever admit these as being extreme because, like I said, it's a matter of perspective...and your perspective is anything done by liberals is never extreme...I have a feeling your response will exemplify my OP perfectly...

You know why they need to raise the debt ceiling right?...to pay interest on our current debt...does this make any sense to anyone? Because it is completely irrational and unsustainable. This cannot be argued.


I would love it if there were some prominent leftist extremism on the national stage. :biggrin1: Compared to how far right this nation has swung, I'm a flaming pinko commie! I'm perfectly comfortable with the fact that I am quite a bit more liberal than like 90% of this nation.

Sadly neither example you provide is even really leftist, let alone leftist extremism. Mandating that everyone buy private insurance is hardly the stuff of liberal fantasy, and in fact the very same type of plan was proposed years ago by. . . the Republicans. :eek: The Clinton/Obama/DLC-style faction of Democrats have shifted so hard to the center that many of their policies are stuff Republicans ten-twenty years ago would have frothed at the mouth over. If you want an idea of what a leftist healthcare system would look like, it'd have to be a public single-payer system that covers a predetermined "basic health needs" package and eliminates private insurance from that realm. Private insurers can supply deluxe packages for the rich if they want, but they no longer have control over your typical non-rich person's basic health needs. In order to keep the medical loss ratio as high as possible, claim-denial services would be done away with and basically anything prescribed by a certified physician that's covered by the public plan would be approved. Counter-measures such as delayed compensation for the immediate cost of the deductible would be introduced in order to stem abuse of the system. Govt and doctors and consumer representatives would get together periodically to set profitable yet fair prices on each procedure covered by the public plan. We'd digitalize patient records and fire most the secretarial staff. Devise methods of subsidizing higher education + training so that our doctors, to the extent possible, don't head into their jobs already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (thus driving down costs). Etc. This is where a truly extreme liberal health program would have to start. The TP's droning that every Democratic policy is an example of deranged leftwing extremism does not make it true, it just means that they like to loudly repeat stupid things. There's a stark limit to the "it's all perspective" rebuttal, and if you studied the ideology a bit I think you'd see this.

As for the debt unless you're more specific I can't really say that adding to our debt is idiosyncratic of either party, as they both seem to do it with glee. An extreme leftist would be taxing the piss out of corporations and the wealthy, so at the very least there would be some added revenue to make up for that debt. The right prefers to spend uninhibited while lowering taxes, which is as good a recipe for going belly-up fast as I've ever seen.
 

maxcok

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Posts
7,153
Media
0
Likes
125
Points
83
Location
Elsewhere
Gender
Male
Then provide some actual examples of leftist extremism.

Health insurance takeover and adding over $2 trillion to our national debt in just 2 years to name a couple.
Spare us your stupid "takeover" rhetoric. At least you didn't say "Obamacare". :rolleyes: You really need to turn off the propaganda feed and Republican/Teabag spin machine long enough to take a look at reality, to look at what the Healthcare "overhaul" actually did and did not accomplish. (There are no "death panels" for starters.)

In what parallel universe is the Healthcare reform that was passed an example of "leftist extremism"? It does virtually nothing to control the money spent on advertising and marketing and the obscene profit margins of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, does little to guarantee appropriate levels of patient care, does nothing to encourage competition in the marketplace, not even something as simple as requiring companies to compete for business across state lines, much less offering a not-for-profit government plan to compete with Big Medicine; in short, it does virtually nothing to contain the out of control costs of healthcare. That last summary point was one of two stated main goals of the Healthcare "overhaul", the other major goal being the guarantee of healthcare for every American citizen. It fails to do either.

Finally, and perhaps most notably, the bill that was passed forces individuals to purchase coverage from existing for-profit insurance companies, adding by conservative estimates an additional 35 million individual policies to their rolls and consequently untold billions to their bottom lines. None of this sounds remotely like "leftist extremism" to me. On the contrary, it sounds like a backdoor lobbyist, Republican sponsored, Corporatist wet dream; and in fact, that's exactly what it is.

------------------------------------------------

As far as the current national debt is concerned, I have seen statements in the conservative blogosphere ranging from "Obama's added more to the national debt than Bush did in eight years" to "Obama added more to national debt in first 19 months than all presidents from Washington through Reagan combined". Both these statements are patently absurd.

I'm not about to engage in a detailed discussion of debt, deficits and fundamental economics with someone who has no understanding of the basic subject matter and speaks in such obvious propaganda and political talking points. I will make a few observations though: While it's true the deficit has grown while Obama's been "in office", actually probably more than the 2 trillion you stated, a good portion of that, more than half in fact, is attributable to the inheritance of fiscal year 2009 at the height of economic collapse, and that properly belongs in the Bush column. Not to mention the inheritance of two wars, the Bush era tax cuts that Republicans refused to let expire as legally mandated, and all the financial stimulus and bailouts required to stabilize the economy in a code red emergency and prevent a total global financial meltdown. If you think none of that stabilization expenditure was necessary, take a look at recent history and Japan's "lost decade", and consider their problems were a picnic compared to what Obama inherited.

While I don't agree with many of the current administration's economic policies, the problem I have is that they are too reliant on Wall Street insiders and far too capitulating to Republican demands, intransigence, and blatant stonewalling. It was, after all, the culmination of long-pursued Republican economic policies, tax "relief" for wealthy individuals and corporations, and systematic deregulation of the banking industry and related financial industries that very nearly drove us off the economic cliff in late 2008 and early 2009 when Obama got ahold of the wheel. It's those policies that account for our current "crisis", such as it is. It's a miracle of sorts, given the current economic/political climate, that we're in as good a shape as we are at this point. However, if the Republican/Teabagger/Corporatists have their way, and if Obama continues to capitulate to them as all indications are he will, we'll all be going over that cliff soon enough, and this time probably for good.



 
Last edited:

B_RedDude

Sexy Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2007
Posts
1,929
Media
0
Likes
82
Points
183
Location
California
Sexuality
99% Gay, 1% Straight
Gender
Male
Rachel Maddow said that she is a liberal in the current context of things, which she says means that she is an Eisenhower Republican. Hilarious, but so true!

Lucky8 is too young to remember what our national priorities were before Ronald Reagan altered the political discourse of this country. So many people were taken in by that soothing voice, underneath which was a cold, angry heart politically and socially.
 
Last edited:

stratedude

Legendary Member
Gold
Platinum Gold
Joined
Jun 28, 2007
Posts
2,383
Media
16
Likes
1,076
Points
583
Location
Ohio
Sexuality
99% Straight, 1% Gay
Gender
Male
Here is one thing that has led to the ultra-over-regulated US that has gummed up the free market capitalist engine that has given the world the biggest, freest superpower in history:

It's the reaction of the public and politicians to tragedies. They always come together and say,

"I am going to work tirelessly to ensue legislation gets passed that will prevent this tragedy from ever happening again."

Each one of those laws and regulations have built up over the years. And now entrepreneurs are paralyzed, unable or unwilling to cut through all the red tape to get a great idea off the ground. These potential businesses would create jobs and spin off new industries. Look at a company like Facebook. It was only possible because of the nearly zero regulation of the internet. Meanwhile, in the midst of a global energy crisis, no new nuclear powerplants will be built for at least another 30 years because of the Japanese meltdown. Its stupid. I can't even send my son out to go bike riding without him wearing a helmet or else I could be fined. Little do these idiots realize that my son is MORE CAREFUL because I LET him get hurt.

You can't eliminate risk, and when you try, you are making it hard for entrepreneurs to do what they need to to make the world a better place.
 

citr

Experimental Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2009
Posts
282
Media
0
Likes
7
Points
53
How much of an outright robber baron do you have to be to think that the US is currently ultra-overregulated?


We're far from a free market, but it's not because the poor trodden-upon rich can't do what they want, or because the poor are "sucking them dry."

Of course, if you define entrepreneur as the middle-class person it usually is, you could argue the free market has become gummed up to his detriment, but it's the lack of regulation that is to blame: because we let them just do whatever the conglomerates game the system such that new start-up business have effectively no chance at all. I dare you to go buy a huge rural plot of fertile land and try to survive a a farmer w/o becoming a slave of big ag. It can't be done, not unless you've got obscene amounts of capital behind you already.
 
Last edited:

lucky8

Expert Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2006
Posts
3,623
Media
0
Likes
187
Points
193
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
I dare you to go buy a huge rural plot of fertile land and try to survive a a farmer w/o becoming a slave of big ag. It can't be done, not unless you've got obscene amounts of capital behind you already.

Tell that to my uncle...I've been eating his cattle for 2 decades...delicious