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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
all the while relying on feel-good speeches and wishful thinking about shoulda-woulda-coulda futures while in the meantime allowing this terrible machine to carry on as ever.
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i don't listen to speeches and i don't give a fuck about feel-good. all i do is perform a cost-benefit calculus to figure out which candidates and parties are more likely to support an environment that is most beneficial to my interests, which are, more or less, the unfulfilled promises of the enlightenment (reason, tolerance, secularism, human rights, individual liberty, scientific inquiry, etc). <-- that's what i want but won't happen in my lifetime.
i have to weigh the current administration's war crimes vs. the crimes of the previous + future administrations, and the democrats come out on top. i have to weigh the "godless' democrats vs. the "American Taliban" republicans and teh democrats come out way on top. human rights crimes are split 50/50 in the international arena, but in the domestic front the democrats look like st. francis of assisi when you compare them to the republican policies (not saying they aren't both flawed, st, francis only by comparison). individual liberty is split: democrats win on the personal morality front and the repukes win on economic freedom. scientific inquiry, democrats hand down-- republicans are anti-science. the environment, which wasn't a concept of the enlightenment-- both are hypocrites but democrats pollute less. internationalism, a cause dear to your beloved mr. selassie-- again the democrats (teh repukes would love to dismantle the UN). peace-- both are war criminals but the democrats are less bloody and gloat less about their crimes and do less rah-rah flag waving.
neither party is going to revolutionize life as we know it (unless they start a nuclear war), but it's going to be one or the other who will rule for the next 4 years, so IN THIS cONTEXT all we can do is choose who to vote for. this doesn't prevent us from operating in other contexts, like advocating reform or fomenting revolution idf that's what you want, but in this one context, it's choice A or B i'm afraid, for now anyway.
so as a non-omnipotent human being all i get to do IN THIS CONTEXT is to ask "who can do more good? who can do less harm?" and give them my support, warts and all. they don't have to have my total faith ad they don't need to be my personal saviors-- they just need to do their job a little better than the other side-- i'll take a 51/49 split if i have no other choice. then i refocus onto other contexts and operate within them and maybe the landscape will change for next time. for my expereince, the democrats ar emore supportive of community grassroots efforts and causes that are compatible with my values anyway.
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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
Further, I think it is rather disingenuous of you to rely upon the Democratic talking point of villafying, scape-goating and outright lying about the Republicans to generate and perpetuate fear-mongering based politics
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Sheeeeeeeeit son, i don't need anybody to monger my fears and i don't need anyone's talking points, i've seen the bastards run the congress the past couple of years, they've done nothing but harm, and i've seen their international politics the whole first decade of teh century, i've read their plans for the economy, and I AM SCARED SHITLESS without anyone having to tell me about it. first thing they're going to do is kill health care reform, which it's not everything i wanted but it's way way better than what we had before.
do you really need someone else to tell you to get scared when you hear romney talking? you don't do this on your own? seriously? who needs talking points when
romney himself is terrifying enough?
gotta tell you, if there was such thing as a reasonable republican party these days i might be tempted to vote for them at some level because i tend to favor the tenets of economic liberalism (in the classical sense)-- however, it's the religious lunatics and policy extremists and xenophobe fanatics who have hijacked what used to be "the party of lincoln". so, fuck no, they need to fuck off, we need a less-demented congress.