political affiliations
It seems like every time I turn on CNN or any other major news channel, much of the news on the political front is nothing more than one party pissing and moaning that the other party is preventing them from accomplishing whateveritis they said they were trying to accomplish. I'm sure you've all heard it before... a Democrat says that bill XYZ stalled in the House because the Republicans stonewalled it, or Republicans complaining that Democrats blocked a floor vote on blahblahblah.
I can deal with that - for better or worse, that's in large part how the American political machine works. What I do take issue with is how some people or groups of people form opinions about everyday Joes based strictly on their political party affiliation - or lack thereof, or some vague label that people feel an urgent need to assign to other people (liberal, conservative, pro-choice, pro-life, etc) because everything must have a label. Being a liberal Democrat in some parts of the country is almost as bad as admitting you're gay in those same parts of the country, and likewise many people consider conservative Republicans to be jack-booted thugs who are unable to do much more than toe the party line. People from all political parties and all political stripes make some valid, reasonable points, and they are all equally capable of coming up with complete bullshit.
An even bigger problem is that when election season rolls around, it seems to be so much more the exception now than the norm for a candidate to actually campaign on their strengths and advocate their platform than for candidates to spend vast advertising dollars building a campaign around how much Candidate A thinks Candidate B sucks and little else. Call it mudslinging or muck-raking, it's all schoolyard name-calling, with higher stakes, speech writers, campaign managers, and more professional appearances. That has a tendency to cascade down to the habits of individual voters. I've known many people that spent all of 30 seconds actually in the voting booth. If it takes them even less time to hit all of the Republican or Democrat levers, or just press the "Vote Straight Party Ticket" lever, then they will dutifully follow the path of least resistance and call it a good day.
I don't claim to be any better than anyone else, but I do take time to educate myself on the issues that are important to me, research how the candidates stand on those issues, and vote accordingly. While I normally can't spout off every candidate's voting record or position statement on every single issue, I can learn enough through a little research to make an informed choice. The Internet is a wonderful thing... Bottom line: vote the issue, not the party, since political parties in and of themselves are nothing more than abstract concepts.
I could go off on my personal political views, but that would only make this long-winded post even longer and more windy, plus if more of my friends were on LJ, it probably would start a nice little shit-storm of debate. Discussions about politics and religion usually degrade into shit-storms pretty quickly...
I can deal with that - for better or worse, that's in large part how the American political machine works. What I do take issue with is how some people or groups of people form opinions about everyday Joes based strictly on their political party affiliation - or lack thereof, or some vague label that people feel an urgent need to assign to other people (liberal, conservative, pro-choice, pro-life, etc) because everything must have a label. Being a liberal Democrat in some parts of the country is almost as bad as admitting you're gay in those same parts of the country, and likewise many people consider conservative Republicans to be jack-booted thugs who are unable to do much more than toe the party line. People from all political parties and all political stripes make some valid, reasonable points, and they are all equally capable of coming up with complete bullshit.
An even bigger problem is that when election season rolls around, it seems to be so much more the exception now than the norm for a candidate to actually campaign on their strengths and advocate their platform than for candidates to spend vast advertising dollars building a campaign around how much Candidate A thinks Candidate B sucks and little else. Call it mudslinging or muck-raking, it's all schoolyard name-calling, with higher stakes, speech writers, campaign managers, and more professional appearances. That has a tendency to cascade down to the habits of individual voters. I've known many people that spent all of 30 seconds actually in the voting booth. If it takes them even less time to hit all of the Republican or Democrat levers, or just press the "Vote Straight Party Ticket" lever, then they will dutifully follow the path of least resistance and call it a good day.
I don't claim to be any better than anyone else, but I do take time to educate myself on the issues that are important to me, research how the candidates stand on those issues, and vote accordingly. While I normally can't spout off every candidate's voting record or position statement on every single issue, I can learn enough through a little research to make an informed choice. The Internet is a wonderful thing... Bottom line: vote the issue, not the party, since political parties in and of themselves are nothing more than abstract concepts.
I could go off on my personal political views, but that would only make this long-winded post even longer and more windy, plus if more of my friends were on LJ, it probably would start a nice little shit-storm of debate. Discussions about politics and religion usually degrade into shit-storms pretty quickly...