Let’s talk about politics.
January 11th, 2006I don’t often like to talk politics on my blog, mainly because if I’m going to talk politics, I want it to be an actual discussion, or debate. I feel like ranting about specific political issues defeats the concept of the two-way conversations that I would rather have.
It’s actually kind of funny, because I rarely turn down an opportunity to debate or discuss with individuals, but I don’t really need to talk too much about it here, I have other things that don’t need comments in order to be complete.
In the past several days I have found myself reading a lot of blogs in various places. Most of this is through BlogExplosion, where part of the point is to accrue credits so that people will come and view this blog. They give you this option of “BlogMarking” so that you can go back later and just read the ones that catch you, while still going about your business.
Anyone who knows me will attest that I do lean left of center, some will tell you that I’m a liberal or a hippie, but those people don’t have a grasp on what those terms actually mean. I do lean to the left, but not by a lot, and certainly not along party lines. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that most of the politically charged blogs that I marked to read up on later were heavily right-leaning.
I don’t know what it is, I think these are the perspectives that I’m often lacking. These are the views that make me go out and research things a little more thoroughly. If I want, for example, to hear the radical left socialistic perspectives, I can talk to my step-father. If I want to hear what Democrats have to say, I can talk to my landlord. In fact, much of the time, I’m playing Devil’s Advocate with these people because their positions just seem so ridiculous to me on many occasions.
I think that reading the right-wing blogs, it gives me a chance to clarify what I actually believe. I do lean right on some issues, sometimes heavily so, but I find myself taking that side, just for a good argument so often that it blurs the line between what I actually believe and what stance I take for a good debate with someone on the other side of the fence.
I have this imaginary friend (read: online acquaintance) who states that anyone calling themselves moderate, centrist or independent is really just a liberal who is on the fence. His other claim to this is that moderates, centrists and independents wait until a consensus is formed before taking a stance on things. This, coming from someone who toes the party line and thinks that free speech only applies when you’re not talking about your own government.
I’ve found, overall, that it’s the moderates and centrists that seem to have their heads on straight. Even those who call themselves Republicans or Democrats, but actually take the time to weigh each issue on its own merits are the ones that I can respect. I’m starting to think (ok, that’s a lie, I’ve thought this for a while) that it’s the labels and parties that lead the American people into thinking and behaving and voting like sheep.
So many of our politicians fall to an extreme on one side or the other. Is it any wonder that people think it’s about the lesser of two evils? I think that the real problem is that we’re all so focused on trying to find someone who agrees with all of our views (each as individuals) that we’ve given up on finding anyone who can really stop and look at each issue by itself.
*sigh*
This is why I don’t write about politics.
I don’t even know where to go with that. If I just keep going it will be pages and pages and pages of me ranting about what’s wrong with the American political system. I need people to offer counterpoints and interjections just so I don’t keep going forever.
Blah. I won’t be doing this very often.
~FG };^>
I must say that I tend to agree with you, for the most part. Because the world has changed in such an odd way in the last 6 or 7 years, people are mostly confused as to what they believe. They don’t know what to is truth and what is “spin”.
nice header.
Comment by KTDixon � January 12, 2006 @ 2:15 am
People have always been confused, though, at least the majority of people. I think that part of the problem these days is that people feel like they’re more aware with the vast amount of information available to them. It goes back to why I like reading right-wing political blogs - too many people isolate themselves so that all the input they receive does little more than validate what they already think.
I think it helps make people feel smarter, when they don’t have to put any thought into things…
Comment by FyreGoddess � January 12, 2006 @ 2:30 am
I think there are two big problems, 2 party system, and people thinking they have to vote. OK, I am sure I will get agreement with the first, I have hardly ever found someone who doesn’t agree that we need to shake up the whole left right thing and get a better grip on a multi-party system. But the second is bound to be misunderstood. So I will clarify.
People think you have to vote, that if you don’t vote, you are not doing your part, well, I think those people are morons and should be shot, because those are the people that tend to vote party lines. If someone honestly says I don’t have enough info to make an informed decision so I am making the choice to not vote rather than blindly cast a ballet, I will respect that person all day long. If someone argues with me that it is my responsibility as an american to cast a vote even though I may be completely 100% uneducated on the candidates and their views, I think those people should have their right to vote stripped until they are made to understand that voting is something that should be an informed decision. And if I am smart enough to understand that I don’t have the proper info to vote wisely my choice not to vote is itself a vote, an informed decision that I don’t have enough information.
So if anyone has actually said to someone, it is your responsibility to vote (even if the person they are talking to is completely uninformed) then you should go play in traffic. OK, that’s harsh. But I’m not taking it back.
Comment by Ryan � January 12, 2006 @ 9:32 am
First off, regarding the two-party system, I, of course, agree. I also think that people who most often think for themselves will state the same thing. It’s those who parrot (and not just vote, but reiterate the talking points from) the party lines will say that it’s not a flaw in the two-party system or that there’s no possible way that anything else could work. It’s those who are so accustomed to the status quo that they can’t even comprehend something else actually working. This happens on both sides of the fence.
In terms of actually voting or not, I don’t know, I think that the problem there is far too complicated to really be able to analyze properly. It comes down to an issue of 1) people not being informed enough, 2) people not KNOWING that they’re not informed, 3) sticking to news sources that tell people what they already “know” 4) the inherent lying and spin in politics.
It’s not easy to make an informed decision, especially when it comes to the point of having to step outside of one’s comfort zone. It takes an awful lot of effort and even just finding facts isn’t something you can do quickly. The slamming campaigns that put the opponent in the poorest possible light don’t help or hinder either candidate, it just makes things messier and makes facts, actual facts, harder to come by.
I almost think that the two-party system has created a situation where it’s next to impossible for the average American voter to gain enough information to make an informed decision. It’s a cycle and until people stop looking at third-parties as a “wasted vote” it will continue, to the detriment of all of us.
Comment by FyreGoddess � January 12, 2006 @ 10:08 am
You are giving more credit to people than I think is fair. You are assuming people are at least attempting to find out about the candidates but getting biased info, even that I would be semi ok with cause they tried. I know people who don’t even look for the name of the candidate, they simply look for the party name and pull the lever, I have had conversations like,
- who did you vote for?
- oh the guy for party X
- what was his name?
- I don’t know, I didn’t look
Seriously people are voting without knowing who they are voting for.
Also I have talked to people and they have literally argued that it is better to cast a blind vote, like cover your eyes and pull a lever without looking and register the vote than it is to make the informed, conciense and intentional decision to abstain. I have even said what if I go in, register my vote and don’t vote for a candidate, but go, sign the list, cast the vote and literally and intentionally vote for no-one? Nope still better to reach and pull, as long as someone recieves a vote from you regardless if you pick them or just throw a dart at the collection of yahoo’s available it’s better than abstaining.
These people need to, well, I just don’t know.
Comment by Ryan � January 12, 2006 @ 13:30 pm
Yes, I have had similar conversations as well, although most of the time I have them before the actual election.
Who are you voting for?
[Candidate who actively works against the ideals of the person answering the question.}
Really? Why’s that? I mean, you know that this guy [insert what he does].
Several years ago there was someone running for a local office that a whole lot of women, specifically single mothers were pretty keen on. The guy had a long list of the times that he had screwed over single/working mothers and he was incredibly outspoken against women in the workforce (damned if I can remember his name!). Problem was, all they saw was what he put on television and on his website, it took real digging to get the truth about him.
Sure, not everyone does the research, but honestly, it’s HARD to do in a lot of cases. It takes dedication and WORK to figure out what’s really going on with people and, for the most part, it’s too hard for the average internet user. I don’t mean that as a put-down, in my experience, it’s a simple truth.
I agree, there are people who put NO effort into it at all, but the question is, how can you stop people from voting party lines and not being informed without running into some serious demographic discrimination? I think that the fault lies more in the way elections are run - as smear campaigns - than with the individuals in question. If we were less inundated with finger pointing and lambasting, and were presented with actual voting records and facts, we would *all* be a lot more informed, overall.
Comment by FyreGoddess � January 12, 2006 @ 13:36 pm
Yeah alot of that is true, but what that really points to at the end of the day is the media. I honestly feel more and more that everything is way way way way WAY WAY WWWAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY to biased and entertainment driven. If the United States media as a whole could actually provide a fair and honest view of the United States then we wouldn’t really need to have the discussion. But it is now more important to have your say than to speak the truth. It is more important to entertain than it is to inform. It’s more important to keep viewers tuned into your channel than it is to present a clear and honest representation of the truth. Basically the American public has made it clear that it is ok to tell the dirty 1/2 truthes and slander as long as it’s entertaining and twist the facts or straight up lie to sell your goods as long as it’s entertaining.
If the truth was painfully obvious and well presented such that you couldn’t avoid being well informed the elections would start to sort themselves out.
There is always the problem that the average and in some cases even above average american does not have the capacity to grasp the intricacies of the american political and goverment system.
I think there should be a pre-vote test, you need to prove that you are not a complete moron and have at least the minimum understanding of the election and the government to be allowed to vote. Of course then there would be focus groups and campaigns that were aimed to educating people how to get around that and still vote party lines. Hey kids we will throw you a concert and make you cool T-shirts if you register to vote (for our guy) you can even vote for anyone you want (because we wouldn’t be focussing you if we didn’t already you are likely to vote for our guy) we are going to make voting cool (because it’s cool to stack the votes based on stereotypes and polls).
Comment by Ryan � January 12, 2006 @ 15:04 pm
Re: Media
The problem there is that you’re never going to get to a point where people believe that the media is unbiased. I don’t know that you can ever really have an unbiased media. The same people who believe strongly in the “Liberal Media” believe that Fox News is truly “Fair and Balanced”, you can find points that both prove and counter for each idea that gets set forward and you’re never going to convince anyone that EVERYTHING is targetted toward one thing - making money.
People don’t want truth, and they don’t want news. I’ve gone around and around with people over and over and over again. Please see my essay on Gossip vs. News. People want to hear (and I’m saying it again) what they think they already know. I was reading a book (or watching a movie? I think it was a book) RECENTLY and damned if I can remember what it was. People don’t want News, they want Olds. They don’t want to hear about things they were happier not knowing, they want to hear about cats in trees and people they know and politicians doing sleazy things that politicians do. They do NOT want to know about wiretaps or casualty rates or anything that doesn’t directly affect them - even if it may eventually directly affect them.
Re: Voting
I’d like to see the government and media decide to, instead of trying to make voting look cool, try to make information and research look cool. How about teaching people to *inform themselves*? Oh, wait, then they might not watch so much TV… ot give the media as much power…
Comment by FyreGoddess � January 12, 2006 @ 15:27 pm
Certainly that ones opinion on which way the media swings is somewhat open to interpretation, but I have rarely heard anyone even very left wing enthusiasts argue that taken as a whole the media is anything other than liberal. Surely an example of a farther right or left or whatever station or newspaper or whatever can be made, but it is hard to not agree that there are more liberally biased opinions available than conservative. But that’s because liberal is more fun and more exciting. If you could gain higher viewership by promoting conservative values like saving yourself for marriage and only buying your needs as you could with big breasts and big screen TV’s then you would see a conservative biased media, which honestly in some places in the US you do. But, taken as a whole accross the country it’s hard to find much of anyone who doesn’t agree the media certainly has a bit of a lopsided bias.
Now you can attempt to make everyone informed, or make sure that everyone who can vote is informed, or whatever, and I don’t know how you could be fair and still not infringe on rights, but seriously when there are people out there literally buying votes it just kind of shits on the system.
When people don’t even understand how voting works, how the electoral college works, doesn’t know what it means to vote argue with me about voting it makes me crazy. Trust me that is not aimed at you, it’s just when I talk about voting those conversations tend to rush to my head and make me all crazy like!
Comment by Ryan � January 13, 2006 @ 14:28 pm
I’m not going to argue media bias. Specifically, in this format, but it’s an arguement that I’m not 100% sure I know where I personally stand, so I refuse to have it.
That said, I think there’s too much made of bias within the media. People spend so much time screaming that they cater to one side that they often fail to see that it’s *incompetence* in the media that really causes the problems.
I won’t watch the local news on television anymore because the last time I did (well, ok, the last time I did Liz Bishop was blocking the headline which wound up reading “Baby Eaten”, that was funny!) I was subjected to these so-called journalists butchering the english language. “Exspecially” is STILL not a word. Blah.
If I want to know what’s going on, I use the internet, not because it caters to ME, but because it caters to everyone and I can go out and get both sides of the story… I can get 100 different sides of the same story and make up my own mind.
But it seems like our entire culture is designed to make people less interested in doing things for themselves. I’m not even talking about social welfare programs, but even the case in Washington State where they have a test that must be taken (and passed within 5 retakes) in order to graduate. There has recently been a huge outcry that the test is too hard and needs to be dumbed down so more kids will pass it.
They only need to pass at an 8th grade level right now.
This is not unusual. This is the sort of thing that we see going on all the time. Everyone seems to think that things should be handed to them… no one should have to work hard to get anything, no one should have to actually know things to feel smart about it. Shoot, talk to Amber about how limited *she* is in her classroom because of this warped sense of entitlement that EVERYONE has.
I don’t disagree, please understand that. I just can’t come up with any way that a voting test would ever be passed as a bill.
The system is BROKEN. It has been for a while. The biggest problem that I see is that, as a country, we find things that work in the moment and then coast on that until it’s painfully obvious that it’s just not working anymore. Social Security and Welfare are *prime* examples of this. They don’t work, they haven’t worked for a while, but at their inception, they were exactly what was needed.
American’s have a serious problem with the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset. So much so that when it starts to break, most of the time the majority can’t even see that’s it’s starting to fail… certainly not well enough in advance to fix or change it as needed.
Comment by FyreGoddess � January 13, 2006 @ 14:48 pm
Wow, miss a day, miss a lot on this one.
Anyhow, I also agree with the 2 party comment, but it’s still better than 1. I wish we were offered as many options as our Iraqi friends, somewhere around three or four hundred. That would be an election to watch right there.
As for the media bias, see Hunter S. Thompson.
“The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid any attention to it until one of those known, heavy, out-front shoplifters came into the place… but when that happened, everybody got so excited that the thief had to do something quick, like buy a green popsicle or a can of Coors and get out of the place immediately.”
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
He was the first “reporter” to openly admit his political leanings were present in his “reporting”. Which is one of the reasons I admired his writings, you always knew what you were in for.
As for the US system, I wouldn’t call it broken, more like in need of an over-haul. A new look through new eyes, so that it fits our current situation as aposed to the WW2 generation.
Comment by KTDixon � January 16, 2006 @ 1:23 am
The only reason I call it broken is because I fear (and rationally, I think) that even if we overhauled it to the extent that it needed to bring up up-to-date with the Internet Age, that it would be another 60 (+) years before it happened again. That, to me, indicates it’s broken.
What we need is an evolving system, one where instead of things just blindly being renewed, they are reevaluated as often as necessary. Where, instead of resting on our past successes, we look at what challenges we face today. This doesn’t happen. Hence, IMO, the system is broken.
I should really have gone to bed a while ago…
Comment by FyreGoddess � January 16, 2006 @ 1:32 am