Well, I guess you have good reason not to have any hope anymore if people aren't going to care anymore. I'd start thinking the world was doomed, too.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about, actually. What is "care"? The average person in the US says that if you don't vote or "get involved" in politics, then you're "not patriotic" or just don't care, as if it were such a bad thing.
The problem is that people in this country are
brainwashed, or as close to it as you can come to that on a mass scale. I said I'd seen some of the reason for our political downfall in this thread already--I didn't lie. The "either/or" mentality about the two parties is killing us. Last year I mentioned in a political discussion that I'm probably gonna vote third party just because I can't stand the two main ones at all, and one girl (an SJ... go figure) goes "why would you do that? You know they're never gonna win, so why wouldn't you vote for the one of the two you find better?"
This is the first reason our country is done for, in my opinion. No one besides Republicans or Democrats will ever take office because there are too many deluded people who "care." They pad the vote so that no one except those who must be nominated by those who run the two parties even has a chance.
But, of course, that's only a problem if the two major parties are bad for the country in the first place. I think that they are. Ignoring the faults and lies of the individuals who get elected, the parties practically run the government more than the individuals. Politics and elections are mostly showbusiness anyway--grab some good speakers who the people will trust and make them say whatever they can to get the middle voters. Every time you hear a negative ad on tv talking about how one person flip-flopped from what they said back 8 or 9 months ago? That's because they say whatever they can to sound like "the archetype of their party" during primaries, because only the hardcore members of them will vote... then switch their strategy to appeal to the middle ground in the actual election. Why would you sound like the most hardcore Republican if the most hardcore Republicans will vote for you just because you're not a Democrat? No, you have to appeal to the people who could vote either way, and that creates contradictions. I don't care how good you are, nobody can stay consistent when the set of views they voice isn't their own.
The reason I say the parties control the candidates is because you physically can't get "that far" towards the presidency unless you're someone they think can win. The primary goal of both parties is simply to get into office. Sure they may say (and may even think themselves) that they're doing the best thing for their country, but the policies say otherwise. Sometime if you get the chance, look up gerrymandering hall of fame on google. It shows pictures of "districts" that were set up by state goverenments in order to remain in power. With the aid of computers they can divide up different sides of the street based on whether the members usually vote Rep. or Dem. and virtually ensure that they keep control of most of their districts. In some cases they made a district follow interstate highways because a law was passed stating that districts "must be continuous" (I've little doubt that was for appearances because people were pissed off about it) and they wanted to link two neighborhoods together without hitting any of the houses in between.
Even beyond that, look at the "winner take all" system within states for electoral votes and (set by the state government, of course) within districts for Representatives. If that does nothing else, it
almost certainly prevents a third party from entering office. Occasionally you may get a rogue representative into the house who's independent or third party... but it's rare, and clearly out of the question for the presidency. If they don't care about staying in power, why not enact something like proportional representation so that someone else has a chance? The answer (I think) goes back to that girl I mentioned earlier. If there weren't people thinking "which one of these two do I want to elect this time?" every time there's an election, there'd be a far better chance of having a government that
actually represents a large number of views, rather than just two different parties who basically represent the same one. If PR got set in place, people wouldn't be in the mental captivity that they are now, tricked (or perhaps not tricked, since there's a large element of truth in it... but at least believing) that no one else has a chance.
And then the media... oooh how much the media sucks. Fox takes a lot of crap for spouting Republican propaganda... but it's only because the majority of people are Democrats. You'd be foolish not to think that CNN and NBC aren't spouting their own brands of propaganda just as much. They just don't get pinned for it because most of the population agrees with them--in other words, they've done a better job by getting away with it. Evidence for the claim? If you were watching the debates during the nominations, (at the risk of sounding like one of those internet fan boys) take a look at Ron Paul. That guy may be the only politician I've ever seen who refuses to play the game. Regardless of what you think about his views, I heard him talk and for the first time ever I actually got the impression that there was a politician who
had his own views. It's tougher to see in debates, but they held an interview with him up in New Hampshire for an hour where they actually let him explain himself, and he was actually
smart, supporting things that had substance to them and actually having an answer when someone asked "why?" I read once that he had committed virtually every act of political suicide that you could, and still managed to stay in office. But think about it... and if your knee jerk reaction was "that guy was crazy" or "just an internet fad," you're basically proving my point for me. The popular news stations... in fact I think all of them... made him out to look crazy. This is tougher to argue to an F crowd, but they discredited him by making it look like he had no chance (and I'm not even saying he did, but they made it look like that) almost immediately after he decided to run. Then the debates... if you watched any of them, they were just simply disrespectful to him. Why? I'm not sure... but I've got a sneaking suspicion it has to do with the fact that he wasn't so tied to the party with which he was running--he would have done his own thing (like he did as a Representative) instead of compromising like anyone who actually has a chance of winning.
So that's why I don't hold out hope. People are hopelessly ensnared by the idea that nobody outside of the two main parties can win--which, in a democratic system, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The policies enacted by the two parties, most notably the winner-take-all system, deny the possibility of anyone else getting into office. The people the two parties elect, in the meantime, are untrustable and work almost entirely by compromise. And finally there's the media--yes, all of the media--who can back them up and discredit anybody who wouldn't work with them. This is a
short list of the reasons why I have no hope for the country. It's getting too long to continue, but I didn't even get to the shameful "chipping away" of freedoms that comes from interpreting the Constitution while ignoring authorial intent, or some of the more horrifying policies that have the appearance of helping people while in fact handicapping them for the benefit of a larger number of voters (can anyone say minimum wage?). I get the feeling it's already so long that few people will actually read this, though, so I'll cut it off here and come back if anyone cares. My point being this, though: it's not that I don't care that saps my hope... it's the people who care indiscriminately who do that.
