I'm going to pour just a little bit of water on this topic before it (1) flares up into a conflagration and (2) before I drop some petrol on it myself.skirtedMarine wrote:OOh My goodness! I couldn't believe I found a forum where many are not indoctrinated by the Socialist educational masses, and folks like crfriend are able to think for themselves.
Politics, like religion, is one of the topics that is almost guaranteed to cause consternation in the community, especially if folks don't choose their words carefully. For that reason, it's something of an unwelcome guest here, not unlike a bout of flatulence on an elevator.
There are two things to remember about politics in the US of A. First and foremost is that there is no honour in the business any more. Quite likely the last President that had a whit of honour was Theodore Roosevelt, and he had more than his fair share of warts. Secondly is that despite what's taught to youngsters in school, the President is a figurehead without all that much overt power save that of Commander in Chief, and that one's been steadily peeled back over the years to keep more disasters like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan/Pakistan from happening. The real policies and doctrines come from a tiny elite of power-brokers that are neither elected nor visible to the general populace; this renders both political parties in the US of A as little more than theatre to appease the masses.
Personally, I detest both candidates at the moment, and here's why: Obama should have been able to undo much of the damage that was done under the Cheney regency (a governmental mechanism which does not exist under the Constitution of the United States of America) -- specifically, but not exclusively, the so-called "Patriot Act" that handed Al Queda their victory following "9/11" on a golden platter. Romney, and his camp, offer nothing whatsoever to anybody who has less than a billion, and, yes, that's with a "b", dollars of assets; the man is an embarassment to the system (or at least the way the system is supposed to function). The Presidency for him is likely some kinky form of brass ring to be grabbed the same way he grabbed the brass ring of the governorship of Massachusetts and foisted the "individual mandate" for health "insurance" on the masses who could not afford it following two decades of unremitting recession. This upcoming "election" is yet another one in which I shall have to "hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils". I hate doing that. I'm not even sure yet which one is worse.
On "socialism". Humans band together in societies for very rational and very logical reasons; large masses of individuals tend to do better as a whole than "every man for himself" which is closer to the "law of the jungle" -- and we've had a pretty good run of social order from the time of Hammurabi. What I see forming now in the US of A is more of a kinky form of neo-feudalism than anything else, and we're about to turn the clock back by 800 years or so by way of experiment. I'd prefer something a bit more progressive than "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine." Be careful of the labels you use; they can have a way of coming back to bite one when he's least suspecting.
).
