Need advice for the upcoming Presidential Election.

Norik said:
Trust neither. They are both shitty sources of political information.

I hate how elections just tear this country in half. It'd be so amazing if the big parties decided to not run for one time...
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Yeah, those devilcrats are always trying to divide us like that!
 
If you look at Obama and Romney's campaign contributors, they're largely influenced by the same corporate influences, thus resulting in their similar platforms. Really, America only has one party: the Business Party, with two factions that differ in minor areas. Fundamentally, so called "democrats" and "republicans" are the same, and fighting for the same people (the upper class, the 1%, job profit creators, etc.). American libertarians like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson actually have very little to do with classical notions of libertarianism. Much like most terms and institutions in America, the word "libertarian" here has very little to do with the definition of the word elsewhere. American libertarianism is plagued by the same Ayn Randian "rugged individualism" that's been prevalent within American politics for a long while now. Ron Paul seems to mean well, but his efforts are driven by what I see as a dangerous sort of black and white idealism, an idealism that casts EVERYTHING having to do with government intervention as an automatically bad thing, thus why he wants to basically dismantle things at the federal level and let power lie with the states (We've tried this before, and it didn't work out very well, especially not for the black population...). This would lead to the doing-away with things like the Patriot Act and whatnot, but also other institutions of government, like labor and civil rights laws, meanwhile leaving private corporate power unregulated, and the unempathetic crux of our capitalist society unchanged. One step forward, three steps back.

As for what to do, things at the presidential level have become so co-opted by private interests that anyone who makes it there will be batting for the same team and cut from the same mold. My advice would be to focus more on local elections! The corporately-owned news media never covers these things, so not many people pay attention to them, but if you want to illicit change in your community, then get involved in that sort of stuff. Look for mayoral elections, and definitely ballot initiatives. Don't like money going from the local school district's books to a new football jock-gladiator coliseum? Then vote it down! It's fun! :D

Yeah, forgive the rant. Political philosophy's kinda my thing... >>;
 
UnseenWombat said:
Stopped reading right here.

Occupy a job you bum.
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I was simply using a bit of popular terminology to put things into perspective. Besides, the suggestion that those involved in the Occupy movement are generally freeloading hippies is a pointedly slanderous propagandized viewpoint promoted by (surprise, surprise) the news media owned by the corporations most of the movement's efforts are fighting against. :P It's the same thing as all the "dirty hippies" in the 60s. There were probably a few, sure, but most of them were workers, students, academics, and "average Joes", much like Occupy now, and most every popular movement.

... Unless of course you were just joking, which I'm only now realizing is a possibility. :/ I'm from Texas, so... yeah. You hear that sort of thing pretty regularly here in Perry Land. V__V
 
StevenBlind77 said:
I was simply using a bit of popular terminology to put things into perspective. Besides, the suggestion that those involved in the Occupy movement are generally freeloading hippies is a pointedly slanderous propagandized viewpoint promoted by (surprise, surprise) the news media owned by the corporations most of the movement's efforts are fighting against. :P It's the same thing as all the "dirty hippies" in the 60s. There were probably a few, sure, but most of them were workers, students, academics, and "average Joes", much like Occupy now, and most every popular movement.

... Unless of course you were just joking, which I'm only now realizing is a possibility. :/ I'm from Texas, so... yeah. You hear that sort of thing pretty regularly here in Perry Land. V__V
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didn\'t read bush.gif
 
StevenBlind77 said:
... Unless of course you were just joking, which I'm only now realizing is a possibility. :/ I'm from Texas, so... yeah. You hear that sort of thing pretty regularly here in Perry Land. V__V
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It's probably best to keep in mind that most posts in this thread are not at all serious.
 
Yeah, I sees that now. Lmao

Well, I feel stupid (or at least negligent), but now I've experienced that GIF, which is probably one of the greatest things I've ever seen, so I'll put this instance in the win column for moi.

That said, I am from the dirty south, so most of my time is spent around raving lunatics, understandably, so things of a political nature that would strike many as just hyperbolic sarcasm are much more believable to me. In other words, mah bad dawgz.
 
StevenBlind77 said:
That said, I am from the dirty south, so most of my time is spent around raving lunatics,
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Nice, I'm glad to see you have such a fair view of all the people that make up the other side, even while you're trying to paint the lazy hippies who took out retarded student loans to get a degree in art history and now can't find a job and want the government to take care of them so they can spend more time instagramming pictures of their lunch via their iphones as "average joes."

Yeah, that's a big-ass run on sentence. How you like them apples you bleeding heart?
 
Stupidly serious reply in a stupid thread. Had to, I was falling behind on my quota.

JDub said:
I thought votes didn't really matter in an oligarchy?
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Human nature pretty much dictates everything is oligarchic or anarchic. All forms of governance become oligarchies sooner or later. Democracy: the inevitable two party system. Communism: those few behind the scenes. Fascism: der fuhrer can't do everything himself and eventually comes to rely on a small network of confidants/whathaveyou. The only way to escape oligarchic rule is complete anarchy, assuming it stays in a sub-tribal state where people don't have any sort of leaders(since if they did it would become oligarchic).
 
Wandrian said:
Stupidly serious reply in a stupid thread. Had to, I was falling behind on my quota.



Human nature pretty much dictates everything is oligarchic or anarchic. All forms of governance become oligarchies sooner or later. Democracy: the inevitable two party system. Communism: those few behind the scenes. Fascism: der fuhrer can't do everything himself and eventually comes to rely on a small network of confidants/whathaveyou. The only way to escape oligarchic rule is complete anarchy, assuming it stays in a sub-tribal state where people don't have any sort of leaders(since if they did it would become oligarchic).
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If you want to get technical hierarchy is an arrangement that has levels. Top, bottom, equal. Usually based on perceived value of the person, object or idea and usually assigning a head or leader. Anarchy is just...without those levels and without a single head or leader. Communism attempted anarchy. I'm pretty sure our founders weren't fans of hierarchy either. But, oligarchs still crept in.

We can't make informed decisions because of how much we're not supposed to know. Still, electing a President from Wall Street while the world is still in economic turmoil thanks to the practices of Wall Street, especially some one directly related to lobbying for the very practices (Credit Default Swaps) that brought down the global economy, doesn't seem like the most practical option.
 
That's right! I'm writing in Charlie Sweets. We need a President that just shuts up and bounces that ayus!
 
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JDub said:
We can't make informed decisions because of how much we're not supposed to know. Still, electing a President from Wall Street while the world is still in economic turmoil thanks to the practices of Wall Street, especially some one directly related to lobbying for the very practices (Credit Default Swaps) that brought down the global economy, doesn't seem like the most practical option.
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Romney economic policy=Obama economic policy

The only difference is who they pander to. And which distinctly non-true religion they follow(Mormon versus secret Muslim? That's almost kinda hot in its blasphemousness.)
 
JDub said:
If you want to get technical hierarchy is an arrangement that has levels. Top, bottom, equal. Usually based on perceived value of the person, object or idea and usually assigning a head or leader. Anarchy is just...without those levels and without a single head or leader. Communism attempted anarchy. I'm pretty sure our founders weren't fans of hierarchy either. But, oligarchs still crept in.

We can't make informed decisions because of how much we're not supposed to know. Still, electing a President from Wall Street while the world is still in economic turmoil thanks to the practices of Wall Street, especially some one directly related to lobbying for the very practices (Credit Default Swaps) that brought down the global economy, doesn't seem like the most practical option.
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Actually, anarchy is much less idiosyncratically chaotic than most would think. If you read the writings of sorts like Rudolf Rocker (Best. Name. Ever.), Peter Kropotkin, Bakunin, etc., then anarchy reads less like "no oligarchy" and instead more like "no immutable oligarchy". That is to say, the people should always be able to question whatever structure of power exists above them, and do away with it if such is deemed necessary. So, it could result in a purging of hierarchial structures, but it wouldn't fundamentally have to. It was actually a very populist strand of thought, which is why it so often overlapped with the socialism of the time (resulting in things like anarcho-socialism, anarcho-syndicalism, blah blah blah).

Socialism was really much like anarchy, just with things more specifically centered-around factory workers. Things weren't defined in such inelastic black and white terms back then. Marx was far from the father of communism/socialism (not that anyone said he was; it's just a common misattribution). The only reason he's so popularly remembered is due to the efforts of Lenin, who utilized the populist sentiments and working-class momentum of socialism to seize state-power in the wake of the October Revolution. Lenin (and many other dictatorships) latched-onto Marxism particularly because of Karl's paragraph or two about putting power into the hands of a tyrant whom would either be forced or willingly (ha) step-down from such a position after using his influence to set the state up in a socialist manner. Needless to say, many of these countries SHOCKINGLY never seem to get over the dictatorship hump. Thing is, such misunderstandings of socialism were also pointedly propagated by the United States to discredit alternatives to capitalism, so there's a good deal of obfuscation and flat-out doublespeak when it comes to socialism.

As for the founding fathers, a good few of them were actually pretty big on oligarchy and also quite ambivalent about democracy, hence the very existence of an elite class of "a capable few" such as theirs.

'Not trying to be a know-it-all, or anything. I just really like teh PoLitIkal Fyl0suf33...
 
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