There's a lot to be upset over concerning the US political system. Even ignoring the past failures that keep being brought up in normal discourse as parts of history that will never likely be lived down, too many things just outright suck:
- The low unemployment rate is a work of fiction as it pretends to represent people as being fully employed only for the reality to be that business leaders are refusing to hire full time workers because this allows them to deny their employees the same benefits that they give themselves.
- Veterans who are coming back from fighting blood money campaign wars are denied their "entitlements" at every turn out of the complacency of the bureaucratic system.
- The mentally disabled and poverty stricken, especially those of darker skin tones, are shoved into the prison system to be punished over bullshit crimes like drug possession (often planted by the arresting officer just to make their job easier) or loitering as a part of the homeless population with nowhere to sleep.
- The most popular demands of the public such as healthcare that would not amount to systemic murder are utterly denied and refused by the political powers that be on all sides.
- Political bribery, scientifically measured gerrymandering, and voter suppression laws are all legally established parts of the political system that ensure this corruption will continue indefinitely until our society is destroyed by it.
But there's something more foundational at the core of these issues that I want to talk about. Where my fellow US citizens have the ability to make a difference, but it's for this reason that we don't. My fellow Americans, you are all SUCKERS!
...Are you still with me? Can you handle criticism long enough to listen to what your opposition is saying? Good! That's the first step we need to be willing to make. Practice being proud of yourself when someone rationally changes your mind. Save your shame for when you don't do that in the face of reason.
Your Arguments Make Me Sick!
The first point I want to make is how easy it is for your mind to be manipulated by your emotions. This point is summed up and inspired by an 8 minute youtube video by CGP Grey:
Grey explains by analogy how thoughts or memes can be seen as living organisms that compete for space in your brain. They spread like germs across the vectors of media, the internet, and your daily conversations. Just as infectious germs can infect your body through eating, touching your eyes, or even breathing, so too can thought germs infect your brain through your emotions such as anger, sadness, joy, humor, and awe. By liking and/or sharing a thought on the internet, for example, it can catch on like a super flu across multiple spaces. Even more frightening is that it can be altered just slightly as it spreads, such as changing the text on a lol cat meme, allowing for natural selection to take it's course and offering the world the most infectious version of itself that forms.
Where this applies to my argument is that, as Grey points out, anger germs are the most effective at invading our minds. When we argue about politics, it's not usually with those who hold an opposing view. Those individuals are usually glanced at while we vent to people who agree with us about how horrible the opposing view is. In this way, anger germs on both sides of the issue in question work together to perpetuate themselves. When you hear the opposing view posted by the person in your life with the most ridiculous political arguments to offer, you will most often huddle up with your friends who agree with you and start a conversation that will not leave your brain for a long time. By the time you have forgotten about it and moved on to other more important issues in your life, all it takes is one more ridiculous news story or nasty meme from the opposing view to start the whole cycle over again.
In US politics this is clearly the case with Republicans and Democrats. Admit it, your first thought was to apply this contention toward the side you disagree with, wasn't it? It's ALWAYS easier for human beings to see their own rational discrepancies in others rather than ourselves. From the most contentious arguments that have taken place over the last election where a mentally challenged narcissistic clown was voted in to oppose a psychopathic con artist trying to build her nest egg from a fictitious charity fund, I have noticed at least one more side of the argument that has helped to perpetuate our anger germs about politics, the side that hates both major parties.
The side that I'm on. It's the side that inspires Democrats and Republicans alike to rabble their angry thoughts about how we throw away our votes to third parties or choosing not to vote. We are seen as having no moral compass by one side AND of being racist Nazis by the other. Every demand for nuance and change that we make is met with the cynicism, "that will never happen." Well, to that, my frustrated response is, "then we've already lost and we're all fucked anyway." The funny thing is, and I could be wrong about this (I am clearly biased), I get the feeling that this side has been a long standing silent majority that has simply been ignored by mass media to make it seem smaller than it is.
The System Is Rigged!
The second major point that I want to make is about our voting system. In a few other videos by CGP Grey, I've learned that even if you ignore gerrymandering, the electoral college, and voter suppression, we have a method of voting that is mathematically driven to be ineffective and gives us complete trash for political representatives. This is what's known as "first past the post" or "winner take all." When we go to the voting polls, we each get 1 vote (which is then weighted to be given more or less value depending on your district or state size thanks to the electoral college, but I digress...). If you vote for someone because you honestly think they are the best, and they don't get anywhere near to a majority, you are left feeling like your vote didn't count. While our democratic instincts might tell us that this is the only fair and effective method available, it isn't. For example, in a single transferable voting system (STV) you are allowed to rank the people that you want to vote for. If your first pick is among the lowest ranking individuals who don't stand a chance, then your vote will be transferred to your second pick, thus allowing for you to never think that by voting your honest choice that your vote was wasted or counted as a vote for the opposing major party.
As it is right now with a "winner take all" system, we find that rather than spending their time talking about what they are going to do, politicians spend the majority of their efforts on negative ad campaigns against their opposition. Politicians aren't trying to convince you that they would make good leaders. They are arguing that the other major candidates are so horrible that you HAVE to vote for them or risk the end of society as we know it. As a result, we see all of the the warts (plus many lies about flaws that aren't really there #bengazi #WTFDoesCollusionMean2U) in both major candidates. We go into every election cycle knowing that we are voting for a piece of SHIT out of fear of being led by an even BIGGER PIECE OF SHIT! What's more, some of you (you know who you are) go to great lengths to put your own shitty candidate up on a pedestal and pretend that there's nothing that they could ever or have ever done wrong.
For example, when your candidate goes into a church to be blessed in their campaign with nothing more than a shit-eating-smirk to say about whether they really think they are the supreme being's chosen candidate, how could you buy that they are anything less than selfish and insincere? Some of you have even claimed that there's something humble about the ordeal. What a coincidence that YOU THINK the supreme being of all existence wants YOU to be president! You're so confident that you put on a show for the world to see you get blessed by religious leaders that agree! All that other worse candidate did for show was awkwardly kiss a stranger's baby! At this rate, I'm surprised Kim Jung Un gets so much criticism for claiming that he never has to take a shit. If your pastor who's telling you who to support came up with it too-holy-to-ever-shit first, you'd practically be screaming the same about your own candidate.
The following CGP Grey videos should help you understand how the system is actually rigged to sucker you out of your vote and how alternative voting methods are more effective:
It's Fucking Sports!!!!
Finally, I want to cover how the majority of you are framing your voting decisions based on tribal instincts rather than actually dealing with the political issues or how to compromise. You wave picket signs not to point out the injustices of our plutocracy but to show off your gang colors as part of your identity. If this is you, which I am highly certain that it is... You. Need. To. Stop. If your strongest argument about why you support a belief or a position is "because I'm a ______," I'm talking to YOU! Your personal identity has no place in politics.
In the online series by Louis CK, Horace and Pete, there's a great scene that illustrates what I'm talking about. Two guys arguing over politics in a bar, conservative vs liberal, waste their time seeing each other and the rival team and avoid talking about actual problems in the law that should be fixed. They don't want the other side to change their mind. They want to WIN! Hurray, nothing gets done for another 4 years because you idiots wasted your vote on who you thought was going to win! Everybody loses! That's not voting, that's gambling. Worse! It's gambling with a severely low chance of getting anything that helps you. When you do win something as a random chance it's something petty, like removing the problematic law that your "team" put there to begin with (#DADT).
If you are wrong on a given topic, then you should want for someone to be capable of changing your mind. That can't happen if you get offended because you took an argument about an issue as a personal attack against your personhood. You, a human being, deserve respect. Your ideas and beliefs are NOT PEOPLE. They deserve zero respect from anyone. They represent your CURRENT THINKING, not who you are. Stop saying "I'm a _____, so I believe ____." Instead, you should be saying, "I'm convinced of ______ with a _____ level of confidence, but I would like to know if I'm wrong about that."
Also, do not let your level of confidence be 100% about anything. Doubting yourself can be bad if you act on things that you are actually convinced are unlikely. That's a horrible head space to be in where someone in your life could be manipulating you to act with poor judgment at your own expense. BUT it's no better if you can't question yourself at all. Even if you are willing to say, "I honestly feel 100% confident," what do your feelings have anything to do with it? Is feeling what's true a reliable means of determining what IS true? No!
Your feelings are good and valid. I'm not saying that you should reject them. I'm suggesting that you're only acting foolish if you let your feelings have the final say in what IS true. Think critically. Ask yourself, "what would it take to convince me to change my mind, and why?"
Solutions
There is a lot that all of us can do as active members of our communities. Yes we are all hurting and fighting to get by, and it's hard to make time to volunteer, but that doesn't mean you can't keep the conversation moving forward. Challenge yourself to put the greatest criticisms on the political representatives who are suggesting that they will represent you. Hold them to it.
I mentioned that I "throw away" my vote to third party choices. I do this because aside from slowly making every district in the nation an alternative voting system, this is the only way to remove corruption: STOP VOTING FOR SHIT! You need to draw a line in the sand that says, "If my side crosses this line, I will reject them outright and vote for a better 3rd party member." It doesn't matter that a worse person got in because it's THAT fear that ensured a shitty candidate would win in the first place.
In this last election's example, liberals should have been holding Hilary's feet to the fire over having taken forever to even pretend she's been on the progressive side of anything. What's more, the racist legislation she helped to pass in the 90's over fears of "super predators" which were actually teenage boys of color with possession charges, is still in effect today and continuing to cause problems. Voters that supported her pretended that she was a great experienced candidate when she's actually the proof of concept in corrupt political profiteering.
Similarly, Trump voters, at least the majority which were not actual bigoted racists, should have seen plain as day that there is nothing conservative about him. They spent more time looking for excuses to hate Hillary than they spent looking into anything about him. Democrat and atheist suddenly turned pure Christian capitalistic theocrat ready to make the country great again? If only you bastards knew your history you'd see that America has yet to be great for ONCE!
But that aside, Trump swears like a sailor and you conservatives suddenly flip on your heavy appeal to manners? The "grab em by the pussy" remark wasn't even enough to dissuade you? Don't get me wrong, I think you've been utterly stupid this whole time to attribute word choice as opposed to context as what actually offends you, but that being said you can't even be consistent?!?! This is what represented "Good Christian Values" to so many Americans in 2016. When will it end? Where will you draw a line? Would you even go so far as to give up your gun rights if he asked? If that stings, good. You need a wake up call. You voted for an impotent narcissistic child who throws the tantrums of a 3 year old and lies just as well over the candy they stole. He needs a mental health professional to monitor him in a mental healthcare facility (like the ones your beloved Reagan who needed the same had removed) not a political office with our nations greatest secrets to play with.
It is a shameful event that these two horrible people represented the best that the US had to offer. You don't have to agree with me about everything in order for there to be progress. Just please, do SOMETHING to develop yourself further. If you voted for either of them, please change your strategy to something more effective. Like not voting at all, for example. This nations problems don't need a sucker like you screwing it up more. Get involved and DEMAND integrity above all, or just stop getting involved in any of it. If you can't fix it, then shut up, let other people try, and watch it burn if your prediction is correct. Cynicism is just as irrational as optimism. Be active and skeptical if you wan to help. Risk a burn to your ego in exchange for finding a genuine compromise and solution.
Most important: when you see that you were lied to and made a sucker, don't EVER forget.
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