General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn what kind of Twilight Zone world are we living?
How the fuck does this happen? How does it happen that in this day and age our next election is shaping up to include a literal evil clown car full of extremist right-wing lunatics with their incredibly insane positions, beliefs, and conspiracy theories end up occupying the republiclown side of the next presidential campaign cycle?
How does this happen???
(and don't give me shit about using the word "literal", nitpickers)
Cleita
(75,480 posts)jaysunb
(11,856 posts)ladyVet
(1,587 posts)just as long as the jack-booted thugs aren't coming for them. Who cares if a few gays are killed? Or if poor people get their benefits cut? Or if a woman dies because her dead fetus rotted inside her womb?
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Laugh, damnit! Laugh!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]
davekriss
(4,628 posts)There are 2 votes in America: The first is the dollar vote, followed by the democratic vote.
No politician stays on the national stage unless he or she wins favor from the wealthy class. Legislation and policy therefore almost always helps -- and never hurts -- the already advantaged. Sure, sometimes something slips through that, while not hurting the already advantaged, helps the rest of us, but that's like the various phenotype expressions that emerge after child-bearing years: in the bigger picture, they're almost meaningless.
Our democracy is similar to the Iranian system. Just as our candidates must first be blessed by the oligarchs, theirs must be blessed by their Ayatollahs. In both cases elections become a kabukie dance leading to maintenance of a status quo that promotes and protects the small numbers of people that deeply benefit from these arrangements.
Back to the clown car: Can you think of a better way to divide and distract us from the real causes of our declining quality of life? And, note, the oligarchs hedge their bets. To repeat: NO politician stays on the national stage unless he or she wins favor from the wealthy class. Both parties kiss the gold ring.
One last thing: I am not saying both parties are the same, it's just that both have a very narrow agenda from which to pick and choose. Their choices are pre-approved by the oligarchs (by the systemic corruption of money in our electoral system). None stray far from the approved agenda and remain for long on the national stage.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)Divide the country into two Parties and the evil clown car has a good chance to win the race. No one talks to all the people - only the people that are in their Party. The likelihood of an evil extremist winning control of our country is highly possible under these conditions.
UTUSN
(70,744 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)All the ills you note are functions of Big Money's being allowed to frame political discourse.