Does It Betray One's Privileged Background . .

The system that gives us two parties to choose from, that aggressively and purposefully makes these our only two options, is what is dishonest and corrupt. It is not a sign of privilege to refuse to engage in this system. It's more a sign of privilege that you can engage in this system. That the corruption of our political arena has such little effect on you personally that you can vote for "the lesser of two evils" and get by. For a lot of people in the world, this system of voting is a matter of life or death. The odds are in favor of their very lives being in jeopardy if either Drumpf or Clinton wins.

It shouldn't be the case that we are frightened into voting for one candidate or the other, and I am not going to function as if this is the case. If we had honest politicians, it wouldn't matter a whit if we decided to vote for third party candidates. Not my problem that the people of this country keep supporting a system that guarantees corruption. I am voting third party. Whichever evil wins...that's on you for participating in an evil, misguided system.

As for Hillary appointing supreme court justices to overturn Citizen's United...I'll believe it when I see it. Her word alone isn't good for anything.

 

With all due respect, you care too much about the big picture, and not enough about the smaller issues.

reproductive freedom
sensible gun control
worker safety
environmental protection
capital punishment
helping the homeless
to privatize or not privatize public education, K-12
student loan relief
immigration

ALL the above depend on who appoints justices to the Supremem Court. How could I quit caring about those issues, just because I wanted bigger reform? That would be self-defeating.

 

how can anyone prove if you voted for mickey mouse?

 

None of those issues matter when the American people have been disenfranchised. People tend to look at me like I'm crazy when I insist their vote and voice simply no longer matter, but even studies by their own prestigious universities such as Harvard and Princeton all support my position.

YOUR VOTE and VOICE NO LONGER COUNT FOR SQUAT, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA IS OFFICIALLY DEAD.

The whole reason Americans are now spending a billion dollars on a single election is because their votes simply no longer matter and the only possible way to sway an election is to spend more money on advertising because, while the lights might be on, nobody is home. Its the same old same old of people voting for the lesser of two evils because they refuse to admit they've been disenfranchised. Americans sold their birth right to the highest bidder long ago and for laughs you can now watch Conan O'Brian make fun of the media routinely spouting the exact same bullshit verbatim. In ten years of asking if anyone knows the simple distinction between a lynch mob and a democracy I have yet to hear the correct answer from even academics and I'm not alone. One of the most famous Nobel prize winning economists in the country writes for the NY Times and says exactly the same kind of things I'm saying here, while everyone just looks at him like he's crazy.

Americans like to say "You can't fix stupid" and forty years of studies by the National Science Foundation have consistently confirmed one in five Americans insist the sun revolves around the earth. Of course, anyone could easily do studies on the issue attempting to prove me wrong such as asking people how they intend to vote, if at all, and then checking the results to see if it makes any difference, but they all seem to prefer to simply yell that their vote still matters.

 

I'll take a pragmatic, non-feelings approach to this:
reproductive freedom - A matter of responsible personal choices.
sensible gun control - Usually a matter of personal responsibility as well.
worker safety - I've been through OSHA training, it's intense. Compared to a century ago working in the US is "paradise". Except, of course, that we have to actually work, which sucks. I had higher hopes for the 21st century. Silver skin-tight suits. Flying with no luggage. A 4 hour work week......
environmental protection - Absolutely. But I think we should emphasize the pollution aspects more, since they are readily familiar to people. A guy tossing his condom wrapper onto the sidewalk doesn't see the impact to climate change. How can you explain it to such a dolt? But, he can easily see and smell pollution.
capital punishment - I think there are people, just like Chimpanzees, who are so horrible the rest of the group has to kill them to restore harmony.
helping the homeless - I've been there a few times, the longest for a year. I never had any interest in staying that way, but I can see there's a fine line for some people. They want to be charitable, but they know they risk becoming yet another enabler for some of them. In Charleston WV the homeless are issued brightly colored winter jackets every couple of years. It keeps them from freezing to death, embarrassing for any city. And it makes them easy to spot! But does this level of acceptance perpetuate the problem? Or can we accept that humanity has always had this sort of thing?
to privatize or not privatize public education, K-12 - I'm surprised that in the 21st century we don't have corporate schools who groom potential employees from an early school age. It could be accomplished as a charter to satisfy some state issues. Public education has either to present a plan that REALLY moves forward, or answer for decades of failures. Busing was not about integration and kumbaya, it was about equalizing grades so the schools stayed "in business" as usual. Black Americans have been particularly screwed, chewed and spit out by this 1-size-fits-all system of education.
student loan relief - The simple solution is jobs. And in fact, any student on a government loan should get a priority. Instead most are promised leads and interviews, little else. The other side of relief is allowing students who were duped into worthless degrees to at least declare bankruptcy.
immigration - The "choice" seems to be "open the gates and let everyone in" or "build walls and keep everyone out" (except people who pay fat bribes or give good oral). In the past the US has made immigration a unique priority. Ellis Island became a hyper-efficient processing facility, complete with punch card demographics and electromechanical counters. However, I think the nation should consider the Americans first. What use is a a workforce of people with no rights? It does them no good and it robs the Americans of their jobs. We would not have this issue if not for greedy corporations and 1%-ers seeking slave labor rates.

Ok, maybe there's SOME feelings buried in there.

 

If I had to pick one thing as the biggest basic problem with the US congress I'd pick this one (most days anyway). Gerrymandering is the easiest way to steal the votes of the people and give it to the special interests. In this day and age there is no reason computer software can't be written to draw fair congressional districts. Just a few parameters are all that are necessary; no districts within districts, equal population, follow existing political boundaries when possible...probably some more I'm not thinking of at the moment, but it's easily doable.

Hand in hand with this problem is our woeful under-representation in the House. There is currently one representative for every 733,000 people in the US. Compare this with Japan at 1 for every 268,000, Australia at 1 for every 154,000 or the UK which has one MP for every 92,000 people. Of course, increasing the number of representatives would require a vote in Congress and individual representatives are not going to be so eager to dilute their own power.

Congress won't take steps to address either of these problems unless the American people start making some noise about it, and so far the people haven't done so. These aren't "sexy" problems like racism, abortion, gay marriage, flag burning or whatever else it is that gets our blood boiling (and that the political parties use to keep us divided.) The press likewise has been relatively silent; they have a product to sell and have correctly determined what gets the public's attention, and it ain't redistricting issues. So it turns out that the biggest problem with the US government is the US electorate.

 

What you refer to as sexy problems are more like eternal problems. Wedge issues trotted out at every election down to dog catcher to confuse the issues and try to slime some favored candidate into a position so they can then turn around and slip the cake jobs to their friends.

On gerrymandering, some of the districts look like Tetris, others like crustaceans.

 

i think there are plenty of representatives between, mayors, governors, senators, congressman, thats not even mentioning county reps and comptrollers and judges and the president...i could name a few more but my point is the same, there are plenty of people running the country, quite a bit more than 1 in 700k when you count them all in.

 

People making noise won't change a thing anymore than people making noise about illegal immigrants has changed anything. The money is doing all the driving and to hell with the American people with the only way for Americans to reclaim their country is to stop bending over and greasing their ass. If people simply refused to vote or if even 10% of the country went on strike for just one day the banks themselves would come crawling to them on their hands and knees, but so long as Americans keep insisting their voices and votes still have meaning they are merely playing the game.

The alternative is terrorism which, obviously, worked for the Irish who also were sick and tired of the wealthy dominating all of their politics and treating the poor and working class like garbage. I don't support violence myself, but the riots in Charlotte and snipers killing cops are an example of what happens when you disenfranchise and abuse people. The only alternative blacks have left in the US is to make it clear in no uncertain terms that if the gun is doing all the talking they are fully prepared to use them.

 

I don't even understand the question...shouldn't it be a republican that would be betraying a privileged background? Democrats are for the non privileged (supposedly)

 

There's no such thing as left-wing politics in America anymore. You have your choice of insane or just plain corrupt and, even then, its not really your choice when merely spending money on advertising determines the outcome.

 

This happened before. Groups like the BLA declared war on the cops. And were beaten into submission, killed or died in prison. At some point the people in charge will realize that we cannot have all this insanity and violence in an open society. The cops, who have been chomping at the bit to kick some ass, will be released like the hounds from hell. Even as liberal as the country has become there is a point when the people running the show get sick of it and wave their hand to make it "go away".

For the moment, it plays to the narrative. But eventually it will hit the wrong person's wallet, the wrong corporation's bottom line or some fool will beat up the wrong senator's grandmother and then the witch hunt will be on. When this happens, hide your tattoos for a while.

 

That was then, this is now. Back then most blacks wanted to try more peaceful ways to deal with the situation and found success with Martin Luther King helping to repeal the Jim Crow laws and LBJ and congress throwing some real money towards helping them. Unfortunately, the letter of the law changed, but the economic and judicial inequality has just gotten worse for the rest of the country as well and crap rolls downhill. Some wit once noted that when the Soviet Union fell apart freedom in the free world became much more expensive. That's the entire history of democracy in a nutshell, its strength is that people can buy their freedom and social progress whenever there is real competition, while its weakness is that when the monopolies and oligopolies take over the money does all the driving and you get things like the civil war.

The wealth concentration over the last half century and steady repeal of constitutional rights is just begging for serious violence. The US now has the lowest social mobility in the developed world meaning 1/3 of the population has virtually no chance of ever getting ahead and are lucky if they can tread water. Surveys of the middle class indicate most now think they have a better chance of becoming wealthy by winning the lottery than through hard work and talent. Not only do we have illegal aliens suppressing their wages, but we import all the brains we want for higher paying jobs and export jobs like there's no tomorrow. Its simply a recipe for disaster and more riots like the one in Charlotte are the least we can expect. The same thing happened after the civil war when Lincoln freed the slaves and the oppressed Irish catholic immigrants rioted killing blacks because the last thing they needed was more competition for the lowest wages.

What should prove more interesting is the technology now being deployed. The NSA is reading the emails of at least 1/3 of the country and the Pentagon has sold surplus military equipment at cut rate prices to every police department in the country with most now using drones to police their local population. The last sniper they killed with a bulletproof bomb disposal robot carrying a bomb right up to the guy and if thing get really ugly that's the next thing to look out for is drones flying in people's windows and blowing up in their faces. The Pentagon wants some sort of regulation of the technology as soon as possible, but they're seriously intimidated by their own success because the technology is advancing faster than even they can keep up with. Cracking down on the entire population is not good for business and either the politicians will start to deal with the disaster they've created or face the consequences.

 

Anyone who uses the word "privilege" in that context should be castrated on sight.

 

Yeah but I guess my point is that mayors, governors, etc. don't get a vote to raise my payroll taxes, authorize military action by the president, regulate interstate commerce (a clause that is much abused, in my opinion) and so forth. There is too much power concentrated in too few hands (and bought and paid for by special interest groups) in the House.

 

I hate anyone that's a liberal.

 

And If You Don't Know The Correct Spelling Of "Saturday".........-100,0000000000.......



Cheers Glen.

 

Good luck getting the conservative Christians to not vote. They have an instinct for victory the left lacks. (Notice the class difference - Christians rural and poorer, and radical leftists college grads )

 

You don't understand, your vote simply doesn't matter anymore whatsoever. The entire system has been gerrymandered to death and even a twenty year study by Princeton concluded that no matter who people voted for only the top 10% of the wealthiest ever got anything they wanted. They are spending a billion dollars on a single election because everyone is very aware that the truth no longer matters and people will vote for whoever advertises the most. Your constitutional rights have been indefinitely suspended and the NSA is reading everyone's emails, while the Pentagon has been selling military equipment to every local police department at cut rate prices, and congress has given the military the legal authority to round up citizens like cattle. The military has already made preparations to do so if necessary in the name of Homeland Security.

Its empire baby, and this train ain't stopping until she derails.

As for the conservatives, Obama was the first president to be elected when, for the first time in history, the urban population outnumbered the rural and that trend is just going to grow wider with the Republican party desperate to reinvent themselves. Its the north verses the south again, except that its now the rural and urban populations with the same trend happening around the planet. Terrorists are almost always conservatives these days no matter where you go and psychiatrists have often complained that fundamentalism should be treated as a mental disorder. However, they are mostly merely farmers and other rural folk resisting the encroachment of civilization the only way they know how.