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Thoughts on Politics
RuddyDuck9
MD, USA Veteran
Wait, I just remembered I made it a goal this week not to think about politics... rats. 
anyhow... maybe it's my doppelganger duck... So Salman Rushdie (admittedly a bit of a controversial character himself) thinks Trump is a Red Herring.... Just what I've been saying all along! I mean... can one man really be so many different kinds of offensive all at once?
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Comments
I have absolutely zero interest in politics.
We have a federal election here in Oz on July 2 and I live in one of the most marginal electorates in the country so I probably should be interested but I just can't bring myself to listen to the one liners and slogans the pollies dish out day after day!
As for American politics, the very fact Donald Trump may become the President pretty much sums up the circus that it has become.....
@Bunks Facts and nuance are beside the point in American politics. They're pesky. Trump is the logical next step in that environment.
The people supporting Trump are blind. They think he speaks what they wish they could say (which is frightening in itself, how many people agree with him). He is crass and ridiculous, but stupid he is not. He is playing those people-every last one of them-just to feed his ego to attempt to get the office. He is saying everything possible that he knows people are thinking, regardless of whether he truly shares their thoughts or not. He is going to be like having Biff Tanner for president in Back to the Future II. If any of those people think he's looking out for them, or America, or anything but his own self-interest, they're sorely wrong.
The bottom line is, people are fed up, on both sides of the political aisle. They are tired of their lives getting worse, and each side has an idea of who to blame. Trump and Sanders are the result of those sides being fed up. Hillary Clinton is just the turd in the middle. A moderate republican who is going to be elected as a democrat.
At this point, any theory might be accurate. He could be a plant. But I have a very, very strong aversion to Hillary Clinton and she is not getting my vote. If my fellow people vote in Trump that is on them. But I refuse to vote for someone who is so far from my values. Who changes her opinion at every turn based on what the popular opinion of the day is, who lies, who changes her story. I don't trust her. She might not make the country any worse than it is, but she's not going to make it better either. I'm tired of the same old sh*t in our government, and so is everyone else. Clinton is no departure from that.
Thanks @karasti - pretty much sums up how people feel here in Australia about our pollies.
For instance, I got a flyer in my letterbox yesterday that said "if xxx gets in then 31,000 Australian jobs will be lost"
How the f**k could they possibly predict that!!
I think politics is legalised gangsterism. In every country there are a lot of politicians waiting to sell out their people for the right price. Unfortunately when it comes to the ballot box it seems the least worst option is preferable as opposed to the best candidate for the job.
The United States of America is no different. Can anyone sincerely say that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would make good presidents? One is a crazy war monger and the other is a raving loon with a bad tan.
I honestly fear for where the world is heading with either one of them in charge.
But politics is no place for an honest person I am afraid, so don't expect any better!
Joseph De maistre said people get the government they deserve in a democracy.
Does the United States deserve Trump?
If he is able to win the majority vote then I'd have to say yes. I've been saying he was playing a role to ensure Hilary wins for a while now. He knew that if he catered to the lowest common denominator he could get the GOP vote easy and now he's just being as absurd as possible for kicks just to see how many of the dummies still vote for him.
Well, politicians suck but we still need government, so what to do? IMO the best, easiest solution would be public financing of campaigns, politicians wouldn't feel so pressured by donors so they should be freed up to speak more honestly, and they might be able to be more responsive to their constituents. I'm sure its not a panacea but its better than apathy or anarchy.
Overall I have a pretty cynical view of politicians, except for some who are new to politics I think they're all essentially dishonest and tell people whatever they think will help keep them in power. The talent of a good politician is making you believe that they really believe it. This is what I think Hillary is really bad at, she didn't come to the national stage through the normal way where she would be weeded out so now we've got this presidential candidate who is so transparent and inauthentic. Trump is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, so many people feel he is fresh and authentic but he's also probably just saying what he thinks people want to hear.
The Buddhist in me says no matter what system you have in place or who you elect, as long as people are ruled by greed, anger and ignorance they will find ways to corrupt and ruin things.
I think we need to get away from the career politics. That isn't what was really intended for our system. It wasn't meant to be a career. It was meant to be the every day guy who puts in service to his home area to represent his people, and then when he's done he goes back to his life. This mess is not what it should be like, with people who fake residency but never set foot in their districts. With people who major in politics in college and set their entire life path to achieve a particular political position. They are only serving themselves, and as a result they offer and call upon favors constantly. The people they represent aren't even on the radar unless it is convenient for their career. That needs to stop.
They don't know the people, the culture, the values of the area at all. Heck Senator Franken grew up in MN but left for college and didn't return until he ran for senate 8 years ago. I didn't even mind him, until he told me he would vote for Hillary (he is a super delegate) because she did him a favor during his campaign. Nevermind that MN voted for Bernie overwhelmingly in our caucus. And they think they represent us?? Ugh.
The problem with term limits or just the everyday citizen model is that much of government is just making the trains run on time. If every time someone is elected they either have to learn all about the humdrum stuff of government they either won't know enough or care enough about it to make good decisions. I don't know the answer, but I think that creates as many problems as it solves.
Rushdie, The Trump manifests and red herrings (yum) are the red herrings of the human realm.
Politics is dukkha/unsatisfactory. Have you been drawn into samsara? Office politics? Dharma Centered positioning?
Are you trying to be of service to your dharma community or local influence? Are you apart or a part of the cycle?
http://opcoa.st/04wWT
there isn't really any reason for all our government to be as complicated as it is. Simply applying for government services almost requires a lawyer these days. That's totally unnecessary and if we get rid of most of that BS then we don't need decades long career people to decipher it. The government shouldn't be inaccessible or impossible to understood by the people it is supposed to serve. How to fix that, I couldn't tell you. This is just in my ideal world, lol. There is as much division between the govt. and the people as there is between the left and right sides of the fence. It's not working in any direction.
lol my teenage son made this comment earlier, made me laugh
"I feel extremely lucky to live here, where even though our choices for the next president are basically a giant douche and a turd sandwich. At least whoever it will be, they will have been chosen by the people, which is better than a lot of people get in other places. Whatever bad medicine we get, we earned ourselves and no one else is responsible but us. I can live with that."
Ironic, I believe in "big" government, the collective good, the great society, yet I DETEST politicians.
Nevertheless, I do see it as my duty to treat it as the meritocracy we know it should be but isn't. I can agree with -- and vote for -- the policy or positions, and not have to like the candidate's personality (good thing, too).
@karasti said "lol my teenage son made this comment earlier, made me laugh
"I feel extremely lucky to live here, where even though our choices for the next president are basically a giant douche and a turd sandwich."
Oh he's a card all right!
I heard an interesting idea today, that if you got rid of the bureaucracy for government support services that decided who merited support and just took the money and gave out checks to everyone instead you could give every US citizen like $5,000 a year. I haven't fact checked that yet or really thought about it much but something along those lines might be workable.
Isn't that similar to what the Swiss voted on just a few weeks ago? I think they were the first country to vote on giving each citizen a set amount of money and doing away (in some ways at least) with some of the red tape services. They voted against it but are a fairly well off and conservative country already (though they have pretty good social services as well). It seems like it might be a good option.
Don't worry, you're still in the Commonwealth so the Queen will make decisions for you anyway.
Need I say more........
Finland are bringing in something similar to this next year I believe. They are talking about a smaller amount than what was proposed in Switzerland. 800 euro a month I think.
I think the idea behind giving money away to citizens is that it would replace an expensive social welfare system and stimulate the economy as everyone would have more money in their pocket.
Do we have confidence in humanity?
http://www.humanityparty.com
... or perhaps [insert possibility] ...
Means-tested benefits are very expensive to administer. In the UK they have now introduced a flat-rate state pension system, previously you had to apply for a top-up from the state if your income was below a certain level.
I was going to make a bigger post, but I think I'm just going to agree with everyone here. Hey, maybe this year's election will be the wake up call the united States needs?
It's hard to tell. If labor, environmental, and social issue movements continue to coalesce outside the 2 party structure that has taken over the political process, then it's possible. The idea of it happening within is incredibly naive, imo.
The way the older public continues to support these same candidates year in and year out is reminiscent of an abuse victim who keeps going back to what is familiar but awful for their well being. This is in no way a generalization of non-millenials, but it is a fact that millennials largely reject these politics.
I think folks are just scared of change. It's so easy to just lay back and hope someone else will do the decision making... I should know, I do it all the time (just ask my husband... him: where for dinner tonight? me: anywhere, I don't care. him: I want farm to table. me: oh but then I'd have to look nice.... him:
me: 
)
I think that's a good thing. If you look at politics in The Netherlands or Germany the governments are almost always coalitions, and that is because of the way the voting system works. It's done by proportional representation, and it is kept relatively cheap to set up a political party, with a low threshold to get one representative into parliament, so no single party regularly gets a majority, and new parties are created quite often.
I think the two party system leads directly to corrupt politicians, because it leads them to take a position in opposition to eachother. Rather than a politician truly fighting for what he believes in, they end up picking and choosing what the public wants to hear.
American politics are desperately in need of reform if you ask me. The dead locking of congress and senate on important issues, one-upmanship, struggles around the nomination of Supreme Court judges, it's a system that is not functioning as intended. And UK politics are nearly as bad.
I'd love to find a spot on the internet where it gives accurate (as possible) info on the various countries and compare the main aspects of their governments. In the meantime, all this talk of politics and corruption brings to mind certain prezzes who were in Skull & Bones, and ones who were freemasons (yeah - heads up to all you conspiracy nut jobs, ha ha ha). http://freemasoninformation.com/masonic-education/famous/united-states-masonic-presidents/ (I think it's an interesting tangent, anyhoo.)
Ugh... I dated someone who was supposedly in one of those secret societies... never would tell me which one or what the point was. Excuse me while I roll my eyes. If it's not such a big secret that you can brag about being in one, then it's not such a big secret that you can't talk about it. (This was the least of our problems, though!)
It's all about being a special snowflake (to reference Palahniuk) in a club that boosts your ego.
Politicians are in it for themselves.
Our system in the US barely functions at all and it is most certainly not operating for the best of the people. But in a way maybe you could say it's representative of what is going on with the people. Congress is largely deadlocked because the people there represent the people who elected them, and because our countries citizens are so extremely divided on so many issues, so is our congress because we use that division to elect our officials. If we want the craziness in congress/government to stop then we need to look at ourselves and how we contribute to it. But it seems the people who most need to truly look at themselves are the ones least likely to do it, of course.
As far as the giving each person a flat sum and doing away with social programs, I have doubts as to whether that would work here. It would help for says, food assistance programs. But health care is extraordinarily expensive here and a flat fee may well not be enough to cover what people would lose in government-run health care programs. Things like cancer cost many thousands of dollars a month. I fear that if we just give people a flat fee, many of them wouldn't know how to manage the money and we'd run into even more problems with health care as people are dropped off government programs but don't manage their payment well enough to actually pay for their care. Or woudl that not include health care? I have looked only very minimally into it. Do those "give everyone a stipend" programs only cover cash and food types of programs and health is still separate? Of course it's hard to look at it from a US point of view because most of the countries considering it already have socialized medicine.
Sometimes I think the US ought to break up into three or four smaller countries. Maybe some of these issues would be helped by that. There's really no way to appease everyone if we continue as we are.
I was thinking the same thing...somewhere in this forum...yesterday. That I am starting to think we are way too diverse to be able to expect we can meet the needs of ALL those people and cultures, from mega urban to super rural, from the very religious to the non religious...all with a central government. It's always been that you can't make everyone happy, and that'll always be the case. But it is starting to look like at this point when any decision leaves the country split down the middle that maybe we need to do something different. It's one thing with 15% of the people don't agree. But when 50% of the country disagrees with major decisions, it just leads to the gridlock we have now.
But then on the other hand, I think, if we segregate ourselves how will people ever be exposed to things different than them? If we split the US into, say, 4 regions, the deep south will never grow and change because they will never be challenged. The people who are there now fighting for change might just up and leave because if they are separated into only their mindset, the possibilities for change disappears. I don't know if that is good or bad. People always tend to congregate with those who are most like them. I often ask friends why they stay in the areas they live in when they are so at odds with the majority. And their answer is that someone has to stay to get change to happen. So I'm conflicted about that. Sometimes it seems like if people don't want to change, and it's a huge group/region of people, is there a point to pushing them even if they don't want it? What about when their strongly held beliefs lead to things like stoning gay people or hanging non-Christians?
Indeed, the 2 party system is far more susceptible to corruption, but I don't think it's because of opposition and gridlock, simply because in the 2 parties are backed by many of the same interests, and tend to oppose each other on mostly symbolic issues, like gun control and abortion. Those symbolic issues provide a means to carry out opportunism on a huge scale, because they work as a vehicle for the candidate to get re-elected. On top of that, the symbolic issues also divert attention away from the terrible policy that both parties share, namely foreign policy, economic policy and domestic policy.
For example, Clinton and the Democrats double-downed on some of Reagan's worst propositions and policies. Obama and the Democrats double-downed on a lot of Bush-era foreign policy, and domestically, caved on having any truly workable health care policy, once again handing it over to privatization. Criminal justice reform is yet more hollow rhetoric, while the U.S. still incarcerates the mentally-ill, youths, and disproportionately minorities. Then it strips people of opportunity even after they have served their time. It's an inherently anti-human system, yet is carried forward almost unanimously.
With multiple parties, different parties can overlap in key priorities, and as you mentioned, build coalitions. As well, I strongly agree that proportional representation is badly needed, but of course, that goes back to the 2 parties controlling the process. There is no way they would allow that as it stands.
Sanders is nothing more than basically a New-Dealer, but that's considered "controversial" today, which shows how far things have slid over to private ownership and management, and it's effect on policy.
In short, the two parties are playing keep-away from taxpayers/voters/citizens/the general public.
Which reminds me...Things are not always what they seem....especially when it comes to politicians opening their mouths and snowflakes...
Just a suggestion
My thoughts on politics:
Yes. He's been that way for a very long time. That's just his personality. He does it on purpose. He's been acting this way for decades. The way he acts now is just how he's always acted. There is no way he is a plant. He's just Donald Trump being Donald Trump.
There was a referendum in the UK on the Alternative Vote, which would have moved the country closer to proportional representation and coalition and principles-based government. It came about because the Tories needed the Liberal Democrats' cooperation to secure a government majority, and the LibDems have been stuck as a smaller third party because of the UKs voting system for a long time.
However, the public never really realised the importance of that vote, and those who did vote came out about 60% to keep the current system. It was a chance to change politics in the UK away from a two party system, but momentum and conservative thinking nixed it.
That shows that even if you manage to secure the opportunity to vote on this, there would have to be a tremendous effort at voter education so that people know what the choices and their effects actually are. And that is not easy, given the way the media works and how reluctant people are to invest time in learning political theory.
@Kerome Yes, that's a big problem as well. With the media deeply tied into the political establishment and an arm of the corporate establishment, it is naturally going to reinforce the entire lack of context on the issue. Here in the states, that really goes without saying.
We have the alternative vote system in Ireland and it didn't help solve our civil war politics problem where people usually vote Fine Gael or Fianna Fail with the Labour party propping one or the other up in government.
We often end up with a government that only 20-30% of the nations voters approves of. Funnily enough some people argue that we should have a first past the post voting system! Maybe a system where people vote for an executive government could work in the UK and Ireland?
Alternative vote is not the same as single transferable vote.
Oh, I'm sorry. I was mistaken as to what our voting system is called.
But people still aren't happy with how we elect our politicians. Constituencies with the most seats become party strongholds where government candidates can buy votes by investing a lot of tax payers money in the area. Corrupt politicians that most people wouldn't even dream of voting for get elected in their constituencies because they are "good for the area".
I just like to make the distinction clear. Our Liberal government in Canada promised electoral reform in the election campaign last year, and there's a lack of understanding of voting systems by the general public. I'd really like to see proportional representation of some kind (be it list PR, mixed-member proportional, or single transferable vote - I think any of these are preferable to first-past-the-post). There's been talk of 'ranked-choice' voting, which is what is known in Australia as alternative vote. It's not proportional, and it makes it just as hard for small parties to compete than first-past-the-post. Of course, the Liberals would love to have it in place, and I don't think the Conservatives would mind it that much either in the long run.
In the US, the Green Party and candidate Jill Stein are pushing for ranked-choice voting, and I expect that support to pick up steam with the coming mass-exodus of progressives from the Democratic Party. Third parties are in a very good spot right now (compared to the past) in the US, and the polling I have seen show 17% preference this year for Green and Libertarian parties. As well, the Democratic and Republican parties are hemorrhaging registered voters, and independent voters now make up about 40% of voters.
This all looks good, but is still marginal at best when the entire political process is being controlled by the two big business parties. If people believe that change needs to happen within this structure, I think they are very naively mistaken. It needs to happen both between elections and during, independent of the political parties that would just as well neuter any kind of movement as quickly as possible.
I do think change needs to happen and I'd like to see it in the form of electoral and fundraising reform. It may be marginal but the other option to incremental change seems like it would be revolution, blowing up the current structure. As broken as our system is, the chaos and violence of revolution is wholly unappealing to me.
Things went south in the US relatively quickly when you look at our history of things like wages and so on. A lot of it is traceable back to Reagan and his Reaganonomics theories that didn't work out and are still just getting worse and worse. I don't see a reverse without some major changes. I don't know if incremental change is going to do it. The young people historically are the ones who bring revolutions, and I think that will be the case now. But it is still possible it can come in political forms rather than the forms of chaotic upheaval of life in general.
The Democratic plant thing is worthy of conspiracists on balance. What seems to be overlooked is the massive hoax perpetrated as a candidacy that is for all intents and purposes a reality show funded by the u.s. media, voters and government accomplishing a globally historic marketing campaign of an uber wealthy financier / would-be actor who "earned" while "campaigning" a mere $557 million dollars. To him the presidency would simply be another business (to sell off or destroy in bankruptcy) - if - elected. And if not, there probably isn't a more recognizable / profitable brand of ugly american capitalism. Win win for Trump. We've all been had. He couldn't care less if it was "Tired Bernie" or "Crooked Hillary" opposing him, because when he loses - he wins. "Trump's Life Matters". Greatest political fraud in U.S. history, I think. And take a look back at the GOP there floundering in the prop wash. Oh, what a ship of fools.
Well now, here's another brand new class to be added to my list of fresh courses - starting at high school /community college level: How to run a government - along with how the Metric system really works! I think I could use both of 'em.
I think an effective movement requires learning from past upheaval, coalescing around common principles such as human and animal rights, support of evidence-based policy, and importantly, being a movement that pushes well thought out ideas instead of a movement that just reacts to the current system in a confused, angry way. The movement should embody exactly what it pushes for, where the means and ends are one in the same.
In the current system, we seem to see issues in a vacuum, separated from their larger and very real context. We can do a lot better.
Yes, it can encompass politics. We've mistakenly let the big business parties define what is politics. We have become so jaded that we've forgotten that participating in politics doesn't necessarily mean lying and self-interest. It's merely a vehicle for crafting policy. We're working backwards right now. We're letting politics define issues instead of issues defining politics. There is nothing political about not having enough money to afford preventative healthcare, or watching the climate induce famines or flooding. Yet we've let politics define those things, removing us from any realistic connection we have directly to those things.
We try to avoid politics but blame government for everything.