Non-Partisan Hackery

I read a lot of political blogs from the scary extreme left to the scary extreme right, and all the boring ones right in between. Nobody seems to get it right. All of the punditry, all the character attacking and the generalizing, it all comes down to what team they're rooting for. Well, I'm not playing for anybody's political team. I'd like to set the record straight, whether people read it or not.

First of all, I am in the demographic that the presidential candidates will forever ignore. I'm a fairly well-educated (no, I didn't finish college, but I'm no dummy), independent thinker with a low income who doesn't vote with his emotions, but with his brain, which is anathema to most politicians. So, I don't expect any current major candidate to speak to me. They're busy reaching out to idiots.

Now, if you're a journalist, or a blogger, or what have you, it's one thing to take issue with a politician or any public figure because you think he's a rotten, amoral person, and to make a statement about being a decent human being, but to say it with a partisan tongue, well, you may as well grease your hair back and put on a cheap suit, because you're nothing more than a used-car salesman. Drop the agenda already.

There is absolutely no difference between the two major political parties right now. Both the GOP and the Democratic Party both lean pretty far to the right. There are actually Democratic senators who chide other Democratic senators for "pandering to their activist liberal base", which would be almost the entire Democratic party. You never hear things like this on from the GOP, because the Right loves its extreme self. You'll never hear a Republican kowtow to a liberal, because they know that political parties live and breathe off of being partisan. Why join a specific political party if you're not going to tow their line no matter what? There are no true independents running our country.

The Dems have been focusing on copying the Right so that they seem tough, which is hilariously ironic. Just because the country is run by a Republican mob doesn't mean that said mob should set the tone for debate. When Bill Clinton was in office, all you heard about was his personal life every day. How much do we know about Bush's personal life? Nobody cares, because the Republicans are the ones constantly on the warpath, literally and figuratively. The Democrats never attacked Bush, and when they did, they apologized. They say things like "the war is already lost" and then make very little effort to actually end the war. When MoveOn.Org questions the credibility of General Petraeus with a full page ad in The New York Times, instead of the Democrats using that ammo to call out the clearly partisan General, they hide behind the Republicans and vote to condemn the ad. They pretend to be anti-war, but they fund the war no problem, because they don't want to lose votes from the aftermath of being dubbed "troop deserters."

This war will never end, because both parties are afraid to lose support. It's not about oil, it's not about power, and it's not about national security. America is run by a government of sycophantic individuals who only want to keep office. The GOP have clung to the war because they've learned that this country will vote them into office even after all the damage they've done, so their tune doesn't need to change. It's a proven commodity. The Democratic party can't condemn the war with any muscle, because the Republican-run Pentagon will deploy "retired Generals" throughout the media to stunt any growth in support of the anti-war message. They feel if they contradict a retired General, it would be like yelling "bullshit" in the middle of one of your kindly old uncle's fishing yarns. The left has a huge uphill battle, because the media has already turned liberal into a curse word AND they've made war sound like a necessary and heroic idea no matter who gets tortured. Just like America will never "win" the war for the Middle East, the Democrats will never win the war on right-wing ideals.

It's amazing how there is barely any talk of third party, especially when it seems nobody is satisfied with our incredibly absurd lack of choices. Ron Paul had a spark there for a while, but his lack of interest in a third party run killed his momentum. People believed he could win because he really could have won (with completely different campaign management). If he would have gone third party some time after New Hampshire, his popularity could have soared. If he really didn't want the presidency, he should never have wasted anyone's time.