Jul 21st, 2006, 01:00 PM
Sorry, my panties are still all bunched up.
What I was saying was that the Democrat demise really has nothing at all to do with vote rigging in the big picture. Sure it exists, and as you said, each side does it to the point that it works out to somewhere close to a zero sum. I just don't buy that it's happening on such a large scale as to be a major factor for the most part.
The problem with the Democrats is the Democrats. They have allowed themselves to become the not-Republican Party, leaving all of the responsibilities for shaping any debates to their rivals. The leadership is just a gaggle of shrill, impotent whiners with no answers, just complaints. They discarded liberal ideologies in favor of regressive, socialistic micro-management back when they started to call themselves "progressives." They fell so in love with the methodology of socialism that they lost sight of where their former ideologies wanted them to go.
Most Americans truly care for the indigent, ancient and disabled, yet they reject (or maybe endure regretfully) the Democrats insistence that the only way to help some is to hurt everyone else. Most Americans view our welfare state as incredibly inefficient, which it is, and so full of ridiculous priority systems, waste, grift and scams as to be unsalvageable, which is also is.
It would be very easy for the Democrats to capitalize on this, yet they refuse to do so. "Liberals" should be leading the fight to connect the last remaining third of the world to modern political, financial and social systems rather than supporting theocrats, despots and dictators. "Liberals" should be fighting for reforms of the decrepit social programs introduced in the 40's and 50's and then run into the ground since, yet they insist upon applying modern tactics to age-old problems, allowing themselves to further the issues they once sought to address. Well, in fact, the only remaining true liberals are fighting these fights, and the "progressives" call them Neo-Cons.
Neo-Cons are former Democrats that were "mugged by reality." they came to realize that the social programs they introduced to solve hunger and poverty only led to institutionalized hunger and poverty on a larger scale. They had to leave the party in order to apply the new knowledge, just as Joe Lieberman is facing excommunication because he's not following lock-step with the party's unfathomable opinion that whatever Bush does is inherently the most evil thing ever.
The Democrat Party has become the party of self-destruction, but that does not automatically make the Republican Party the opposite of that. The Republicans are screwing up almost as bad, but unlike the Ds, the Rs actually get a few things right every once and a while... probably mostly due to the former liberals in their midst. Both parties have become primarily authoritarian entities bent on removing the rights of anyone and everyone they can, whether it be gays, immigrants, husbands of human vegtables, or whomever else they can attain leverage upon during an election cycle, whenever they can get away with it.
As you said before, it's all just a power game now. There used to be a point to all this voting. For most Americans, politics is now just a sport useful only for entertainment purposes.
|
|
__________________
mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?
How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
|
Linear Mode
