To be fair, the reason I will never consider myself a Republican is because I won’t align myself to a political party, but let’s just pretend that I didn’t have that reservation. Let’s pretend that I’m on Amazon shopping around for a political party to throw all of my blind allegiance. Let’s also pretend that this blog post is brought to you be Amazon.com, though sadly, it’s not.
My first stop, along with my virtual shopping cart, would be the Democrats. My parents voted Democrat, and we typically get our political views, not from thinking for ourselves, but from our parents. I typically feel safe when we have a Democrat in office. I don’t know if this is fair or not, but Democrats don’t seem to always want to start wars with countries that have different religious practices, and condemn people for their lifestyle based solely on something that their own religious practice says (specifically while ignoring all the stuff that their religion says about not condemning people).
The problem with Democrats is that they always seem to be on the verge of bankrupting us… unless you count Bill Clinton or John F. Kennedy, but no, fuck that. Quit changing the subject. Then there is the other side of Democrats that bothers me to no end, which is the philosophy of: Let’s give all the poor and downtrodden money to help improve their situation, and let’s consider everyone who doesn’t have a seven-figure net worth “poor and downtrodden.” Again, we’re not counting Bill Clinton or John F. Kennedy. Though when we get into the enemies of free speech category, I’m looking at you Bill Clinton, and your little dog, Al Gore, too.
So I had the Democrats in my shopping cart, and then I realized that the price was way too high. Of course, if I fill out the right forms, they’d probably pay the bill for me.
So then I’m looking at the wide selection of parties, and realize that there is really only two, so I look at the Republicans. It’s a strange thing. I’m liking what I see. They speak of balanced budgets. They speak of smaller government. They speak of privacy and independence. They speak of personal responsibility. They speak of many wonderful things. And then they don’t do any of them.
But that’s not even where the biggest problem comes from with the Republicans. It’s the shit they say in between the stuff I like. They quote from the Bible while ignoring all the passages that say things like don’t judge, and he who has no sin, and that when the Bible says homosexuality is bad it mentions in the very same passage drunkenness, fornication, and adultery, among others (1 Corinthians 6: 9-10). Maybe those other sins make our leaders abominations, and we can have leaders who are abominations.
It’s not the desire to follow Bible teachings that bothers me though. It’s the part where they talk about the principles of our founding fathers, but ignore the fact that they founded this nation on religious freedom, and freedom from persecution for your religious beliefs. That would include Muslim, Atheism, and people who interpret the Bible in a way that doesn’t agree with yours (which includes ignoring the sins that God condemns, but the Republicans are ok with). And I know I’m making some blanket statements. All the Republican potential candidates are their individual selves and these statements don’t apply equally. In my defense, that’s all the side choosing is anyway.
So I’m stuck. Each election year I have to look at each of the prospective candidates and see if any of them are worth voting for. So far as yet Obama hasn’t done anything that has amazed me. He had some good ideas with the health care bill, though not necessarily all the right ideas. The bailouts were all bad ideas. The “Cash for Clunkers” was an ok idea in that it wasn’t as bad as all the other bailouts, tough still bad, because it was a bailout aimed at the consumer first, but probably just put a lot of people into car payments they can’t afford.
So I look over at the Republican side of the ring, and I see a bunch of the most homophobic, xenophobic, rich, out of touch with the average American, candidates that I’ve ever seen. I was never scared of having George Bush Sr. or Jr. in office, though Jr. started to scare me for a while there.
I’m scared of this group though. I’m scared because someone like John McCain would have been ok in the presidency, but he had his run for presidency and lost, and so they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now. And I think they know it too. That’s why they’re putting so much focus on getting the candidates in front of the public. Maybe they think we’ll forget that they’re running against Obama.
What my point is that I’m closing the window with nothing in my shopping cart. Once again, I’m looking at the people who are running the United States, and wish they would quit drawing lines in the sand and saying, “My side, your side.” I think I’d like a candidate, for a change, who said, “Our nation,” and meant it in a way that would see real problem solving, not cock blocking in the name of one party or the other.