Hi everybody,
I hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed thanksgiving weekend. I stuffed myself with Tofurky and cranberry jelly. In the words of the great Rachel Ray "Yum-O"!
I was really surprised how many people were moved enough to respond to my post. Thanks
OK, in JamesfromSouthEastPa's perfect, hypothetical, crazy world.... Political parties would not exist. A political party is an organized force whose only purpose is to obtain and maintain power at any means necessary. A parties primary agenda is never to do what's best for the people, it's to do what gives them the best odds of getting reelected. We should be voting for individuals, not because somebody has a little R or a little D next to their name. My Grandmom tells me proudly that she's voted straight Republican for the past 30 years. Republicans and Democrats love to tell us how differint they are, but they whole heartedly agree that there should be no competition on the duopoly they have over our government. The debates used to be run by the "League of Women Voters" until it was taken by the Reps and Dems, now they've made it virtually impossible for an independent candidate to get into the debates.
However, when I go to my local polling place, am I to go past the perfectly good Green/ Libertarian/ Justice party candidate? Who am I sopposed to write in to show my distaste for political parties? Alfred E. Newman? In an attempt to be a realist, I've accepted that we're never going to abolish parties. But it is not healthy for a Democracy to have parties that never die. They need to come and go like the changing of the seasons.
I would LOVE for the Republicans and Democrats to be replaced by the Greens and the Libertarians. They are the only ones who MIGHT implement real campaign finance reform. At the end of the day, money is the reason for all of our countires problems. The military industrial complex, tax loop holes etc... The Reps and Dems are owned by companies that want to make a profit. We need to get money out of government, and expecting out current parties to do it is like asking the fox to design the chicken coop. If not this, than I want to have a much stricter definition of a monopoly. If a company is big enough to have a larger influence over our government than an individual, than it's too big. Break it up. But eventually, if the Greens or Libertarians did get power, they would become corrupted just like our current parties ( if they hadn't passed massive campaign finance reform). They would become calcified and corrupted and should die and be replaced just like our current parties.
I admit that if Jill Stein won, there would be friction, and business wouldn't get done. But what is happening now? Our credit rating was lowered because of partisan gridlock. If Stein was elected, at least we would of had a REAL progressive voice speaking her truth too America for four years. She would of had the milk box of the white house to speak about objective issues because she's not getting money from special interests. Oh my GOD, could you imagine what her State of the Union Address would of been like? I would of had an intellectual mind orgasm watching that. The fluff speches that Obama and members of both parties give have devolved into demagoguery about small side issues that do NOTHING but distract Americans from the massive problems that both parties have caused.
I understand that EVERYTHING I just wrote is highly unlikely,( VERY RAMBELING!) and probably isn't going to happen.
But when I say I'm proud, I mean I'm proud to be, at the very least, trying to create an America that I want to live in.
There's no doubt that I use voting as a form of personal expression. I have nothing but respect for other people who vote differently. And maybe I'll change my mind one day and vote differently. But if I had voted for Obama, I wouldn't of been happy with myself.
Man, I hope something I wrote here made any sense.
