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Do you ever feel that everything political is futile?

Do you ever feel that everything political is futile?


  • Total voters
    36
Elections matter, it was only a few hundred votes between Bush and Gore that could've kept us out of Iraq and saved thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. I don't think everything is futile, I just think the voters are stupid, and that is why our leaders are sometimes stupid.
 
Do you ever feel that everything political is futile?

From a citizen's standpoint.

Yes. The system has been closed off, it's solely in the hands of the Republocrats now. They march out the same candidates time and time again with the only exception that they keep getting worse. The government is in bed with Corporate America, free market is failing, wealth disparity growing; but no change in the candidates, no change in the politicians. They are party shills now, indebted to the arising new American Aristocracy. The R's and the D's are jokes, they fight for the same end. We have wars that will not end, growing problems with police force against citizen, jailing more people per capita than any other nation in the world, failing infrastructures, failing education, non-existent public healthcare; and the same politicians, the same candidates, cycle after cycle. Party puppets who endorse the status quo.

America is in its decay stage
 

The leaders aren't stupid. They are crazy - like a fox. They know exactly what they are doing, and they expect people to vote the way they do, and they are rarely disappointed.
 
I'm often surprised at how fundamentally IGNORANT Americans are even though we're supposed to be in the information age when it comes to things that they interact with on a daily basis. Things that you'd imagine people would pick up on even in a cursory way, Americans are completely ignorant of.
 
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Do you ever feel that everything political is futile?

From a citizen's standpoint.

omg a poll that has a middle-ground option!! Seriously, why are some pollsters around here unable to do such a thing?!
 
Where is the 'Yes, always' option?
 

I never claimed that Tennessee has a bad economy because the state's legislator made the Bible the official state book. I merely pointed out that if your state has a bad economy, why piss away time and political capital on making the Bible the official state book instead of focusing on the state's economy.
 

Yeah I would pass that on to California as well, their economy is worse than Tennessee.
 
Yeah I would pass that on to California as well, their economy is worse than Tennessee.

The only measure California is worse than Tennessee is on is unemployment. The number of fortune 500s, median income, income growth, and job growth rates are all better than in Tennessee. The thing is, Tennessee is a beautiful state with great weather. It has a lot going for it. They just need to focus on being more like Colorado or Minnesota and less like Mississippi.
 

Actually, Tennessee is worse than California on the homicide rate too, IIRC.
 

How much bigger is California than Tennessee. In fact California has a bigger population than all of Canada. No wonder they have more fortune 500 companies, median income is because of the number fortune 500 companies and of course the high tec industry, drug industry, Hollywood etc. California has the highest taxes, gas prices, etc. no wonder they need more money to live on. And for that reason more companies leave California than any other state.

Yet with all that you said about California it is still behind little ol Tennessee on employment. They could take a lesson from you on what to focus on to get their employment numbers up and quit screwing around with trivial stuff like making the Bible the official state book.
 
I'm not a big fan of trashing career politicians and wanting them to function like regular citizens. I've seen plenty of stupid stuff because they are more like the average person. Career politicians just tend to operate smarter.

In our state's citizen legislature, I'm seeing them try to enact laws that would require them to become full-time politicians, yet they want to keep their regular day job.

It's stuff like that that makes me want career politicians because they would be less likely to not understand that taking over the state Department of Education or the Board of Higher Ed would require more effort on their part. They barely have time during the session as it stands currently, yet a number of Republicans in my state felt that they could run the state's education system when they struggle to read a 1 page summary of points they specifically asked for during testimony on any number of bills.

Or at the very least if they vote it in they would actually be forced to respond to education issues more than once every two years for 80 days.
 
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What is California better than Tennessee on? Homicide rate, educational attainment, teenage pregnancy rate...it's pretty hard, actually, to find many metrics where Tennessee is better. And check out the chart below on educational attainment. Note that the states with higher educational attainment are almost all blue, and the states with lower educational attainment are almost all red....

 

Part of my response would be that the rich and powerful have always dominated the political system. My second response would be that we have increased the influence of special interests, but these have often served the masses quite well. In the past, there was no infrastructure for the average citizen and their myriad of experiences to be represented adequately.

Our lobbying infrastructure has exploded to the point where the average person's life is pinpointed to a number of individual exchanges, from the cost of produce at the shopping market to their healthcare costs as seniors. Our politicians have dramatically altered the way they think of their jobs. Men like Daniel Webster no longer exist. You don't have them claiming that you elected them to make the decisions for you, because they are wiser than you.

No, you now elect politicians on the basis of them doing what you want them to do, and politicians now more than ever in the history of the country are held to that standard. Our congressmen are expected more than ever to deliver results for its constituents (which is what pork is), We elect our Senators, our primary process is now a series of public elections rather than a closed convention, our electors in both parties are much more representative of the party's demographic bases, and we have significantly altered the means by which the average person can contribute to American political elections.

We have never been more democratic.
 

It's significantly geographic too. While there are traditional Midwestern states in the bottom half, the list is significantly split between northern and southern states.
 
Yes on federal and state level.
No on local level.
 
I never did until Barack Obama became president. Well actually, in the beginning of Obama's presidency I did not feel bad. I liked what he had to say. I actually BELIEVED him. I had no idea he was such a habitual liar. It took a few months for me to realize that he is completely lacking in character and integrity and is the biggest liar in the history of the world.
 
Politics is as futile as the advancement of human society; sure a lot of things suck these days, but it's a far step ahead of the bull**** of the past. Giving up on the possibility of change and adopting an attitude of fated hopelessness because of political corruption only serves to help enable political corruption.
 
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