Politics

Want to see why no one pays attention to politics? Heres a standard campaign feud, this time the battle ground is the recent energy bill. Pretty simple Republican in congress votes against it, Democratic candidate (who I support) is going after him for not voting for it. The problem is that they both make it sound like such a clear cut case. Kuhl (R-NY-29) claims that there was too much pork and not enough help to actual families. Massa (D-hopefully soon to be NY-29) says that the main purpose was to stop subsidizing the oil companies that are setting record profits. Both seem like reasonable positions, and rather than get into the details of this specific case I want to look at why this way of doing politics is flawed. Well flawed in a democratic sense. The problem is this is bill is over a thousand pages long. The truth is going to be far far more complex than either is able to talk about to a reporter or during a debate. So those who are highly informed don't care what they have to say because they know what the vote meant. Those who are not informed but have a strong opinion will simply agree with the person they already like because they make good points and will ignore the other or claim the other is a liar. And then finally the uninformed, without a preset notion of who they like, this is who everything is for, they listen and go, yeah they both make good points but they're both lying. So who is really swayed at all by debates? Are debates really about swaying public opinion at all? Is our whole political process really intended to encourage voter participation? Or has it slowly evolved into the multi-year mess that we see today where apathy is the most popular political stance? There are so many scandals going on right now that I've given up trying to keep track. The presidential races have become a clusterfuck, the republican options are disturbing to say the least, I mean shit Huckabee is surging in the polls, a man who pardoned a rapist-murderer who then proceded to rape and murder again, thanks Huck, and people like this guy. Then there is is frightening religious rhetoric which I'm not even going to bother insulting. Guliani would be a disgrace to a student council meeting, although I did respect the one honest moment when he said why yes of course the presidents mistresses should have secret service protection too. Then there's Romney, I've met child molesters that are less creepy. And I love how everyone touted his "JFK" speech, other than you know JFK said there should be absolute separation between church and state and Romney said hey its cool be any sort of christian you want, hell we'll even let the jews in, and those treacherous muslims but we'll be keeping an eye on them. As for easter religions well they're ignored, but at least they were slighted the way the second largest "religious" group was, you know, none at all. Yeah he told us to go fuck ourselves. On the other side we've got Hillary, yup. Shes a woman that would shake things up, otherwise shes just business as usual. I don't think she'd be a bad president the way bush is a bad president, I just don't think she'll be anything special, other than the whole first with a vagina thing. Obama, he's decent. I like 'em but nothing to get terribly excited about. He's only half white, so that would be something new. Edwards, yup he's there too, again he'd be alright probably shake things up a little more than Hillary but still nothing amazing. Kucinich would be awesome which means he has no chance. So there you have it, mediocrity on one side, near evil on the other. Sweet. That might be another reason why everyone hates politics. This rant changed course, I had something else entirely when I started it but that was a few days ago and I never finished. So take it for what it is. Just a stupid rant against a stupid fucked up system.