politics is a waste of time

getting involved in politics is generally a waste of time. most notably, if you want to help get your favorite presidential candidate elected president of the united states. you will probably have no effect at all unless you are a billionaire or live in iowa or new hampshire and have a lot of friends who vote who listen to what you say. you can have much more of an effect in local political races if you volunteer or campaign, or actually run for office yourself. but if you try to run for office, you will probably lose, unless you are an insider. if you volunteer and campaign, you will not get to see the direct results of your actions, and even if the candidates you support win the election, you can never be sure if your support even mattered at all, or if everything would have turned out exactly the same way if you had done nothing whatsoever. but the least you can do is vote. at least vote. everyone should vote, except stupid people or people who make wrong decisions. you need to vote based on the issues that matter to you, and get educated about what the candidates’ stances on all the issues are. i have found, for instance, that my stances on the issues very closely match democratic presidential candidate dennis kucinich. but the so-called mainstream media ignores him and never seriously considers him as a candidate, even though he is the closest match to my beliefs and my core values and my stances on all the issues, and probably a lot of other people would also find him to be the closest match to them as well, if they bothered to take online tests to see which candidate is the best match for you. none of the republican candidates are even close to my beliefs. the only republican candidate i like at all is ron paul, because the issue most important to me is the war in iraq. i believe the war was wrong and that people should have seen right from the beginning, before the war even started, that it was wrong. now granted, i was raised in a quaker background and taught to be a pacifist. but i did support the american invasion of afghanistan (that osama bin laden called unjustified in his latest message), despite the fact that i am normally a pacifist. anyway, the war in iraq is completely based on lies, and they changed the justification of the war again and again and again, and each time it was a lie, and the united states has no national interest in maintaining an occupation in a hostile muslim country on the opposite side of the world. our troops are sitting ducks for the terrorists to attack, and it is asymmetrical warfare, and we have nowhere near enough troops to pacify such a large country as iraq. and even if we could achieve victory, it would still be an unjustified war based on lies. “might makes right” is not a valid moral principle. even if we achieved total military victory in iraq and eliminated all opposition to our occupation, this would not justify anything we have done there. we replaced a strong, totalitarian government that was able to maintain order with a weak, divided, bickering government that has little power and is distrusted by all the citizens of iraq. revolutions against unjust dictators like saddam hussein are a good thing, but they must be carried out by the citizens of the country, not by foreign invaders. for example, i and many other people hate president bush and think he is absolutely awful, but would i like a foreign country to invade the united states and remove him by force, and put in place a puppet government run by that foreign nation? no. we americans will deal with president bush ourselves; we have our own democratic process for peaceful transition of power through elections and term limits, and we can speed it up with things like impeachment. and if bush tries shit like what hugo chavez is doing in venezuela to be dictator-for-life, or what pervez musharraf has been doing to stay in power in pakistan, or what vladimir putin has been doing to stay in power in russia... well... i would still say, let americans take care of choosing our government, and foreigners should mind their own business. and this means, in applying this principle around the world, we should mind our own damn business and stop trying to overthrow governments around the world, no matter how much we might dislike them. as long as those nations have not attacked our nation, that is. and saddam hussein did not attack the united states, nor was his third-world shithole of a country ever a threat to anyone except tiny-ass countries next door to it like kuwait. in the lead-up to the war in iraq, the bush administration officials made such ridiculous public comments, so hyperbolic and the-sky-is-falling, it was completely obvious that they were completely full of shit. it was obvious they were full of irrational hysteria about dangers posed by a small, unimportant third-world hellhole on the opposite side of the world. they could just as well have gotten all worked up about the dangers posed by bhutan, equatorial guinea, luxembourg, or trinidad and tobago (all countries that, like iraq, posed absolutely zero threat to us). any idiot dumb enough to fall for the rush to war in iraq does not deserve the high honor of being president of the united states. so it really pisses me off that hillary clinton is still the democratic front-runner according to the so-called mainstream media. what the hell has she ever done in her 7 years as senator or 8 years as first lady? i have no idea. all i know is, everybody hates her. she has really high disapproval ratings. she would obviously be the weakest candidate of all the democrats, and if she were the democratic nominee, this would give the republicans the greatest chance of winning the white house. well okay, maybe a few of the democrats might do worse, to be fair. i am not sure which ones. i am not completely familiar with all of them. anyway, there is a lot of ridiculous anti-illegal-immigrant hysteria nowadays. i have a modest proposal. genocide. that would completely eliminate the illegal immigrants, once and for all. the final solution. inspired by adolf hitler, who killed 6 million jews. i bet lots of people would actually go for genocide, and approve of it, if they were asked about it in a poll. i bet if a powerful president tried to carry out genocide, with a congress full of sycophants from the same party, it would be quite successful. now of course i think we should treat illegal immigrants humanely and not do anything outrageously mean and evil to them. but i really get the feeling that there is such hatred towards them, a lot of people really would want to carry out genocide if that option were on the table. that is the real ugly side the republicans are showing now, their hatred of illegal immigrants, especially coming from tom tancredo, although he is a nobody. but another thing about politics that bothers me, besides all the idiots who supported the iraq war and then stopped or still support it and will continue no matter what, and the idiots who hate illegal immigrants, is the religious idiots who have completely screwed up american politics. if you hate gay people and think women are subordinate to men and oppose embryonic stem cell research and believe in creationism instead of evolution and also think global warming is not happening, this makes you a “values voter” and means you have “moral values” and are part of the “moral majority”. religion is a set of beliefs based on faith, which is unthinking, illogical, stubborn belief in something without any evidence. every single one of the presidential candidates in both political parties believes in the religion of christianity. now is christianity any better than the religion of islam that turns people into suicide bombers and makes people fly planes into buildings? yes, but not that much better. christianity is still based on irrational faith just like islam, and both religions require people to have values systems that have become antiquated due to recent advances in moral reasoning and human society, such as the development of democracy, an end to aristocracy and feudal class systems, recognizing human rights like freedom of speech and right to a fair trial, abolition of slavery, equality for women, equality for different races of people, and equality for people of different sexual orientation. religions were once used to justify the autocratic rule of kings and emperors, around the globe, from europe to china. they were used to justify slavery and the supremacy of whites over other races, the supremacy of men over women, etc. and there were great religious wars, including the crusades, and people were also killed in inquisitions and witch hunts. christianity is only better than islam nowadays because christians today are much more civilized and worldly than the primitive, uneducated christians who lived centuries ago, in times such as the middle ages or when the “new world” was first colonized. but there are many other religions besides christianity and islam, and christianity and islam are both very complicated and have a lot of denominations that are different from each other. but all of this complexity and variety among religious denominations and beliefs hides one common factor: all religions are based on irrational faith in things that cannot be proven, and all of them mislead people away from thinking and acting rationally based on facts and reality. in practical terms, this means that a president who is very religious, like george w. bush, is a lot more likely to make bad decisions than someone who is more of a freethinker, like thomas jefferson. recently there has been a controversy at oral roberts university, and this shows directly the irrationality of religious belief. the son of oral roberts was in charge of the university and he kept claiming that god told him stuff, when it seems perfectly obvious to everyone else that this “god” who keeps talking to oral roberts’ son is just a voice inside that guy’s head. not really his conscience, though. more just a voice in his head that tells him that whatever he feels like doing is ok and he can go ahead and do it and it is righteous and it is god’s will. and why should i capitalize the word “god”? nobody even agrees on what the word means, and capitalizing it would imply there is only one god, one god that the believers in god can agree on, but the believers cannot agree on anything, really. that is why there are so many different religions. if religion really were true, there would only be one religion. the fact that there are so many demonstrates the fact that religions are all the creations of humankind, and all of their beliefs are made up by people, and this is the reason they cannot agree on anything, because people feel attached to things that they made up or things they believe in that they were taught by someone else who made them up. so the more religious a presidential candidate is, the less i like them, the less qualified they seem for the job. recently tony blair, in an interview, talked about how he has strong religious faith but felt he had to keep quiet about it or else voters in britain would think he was crazy. and rightfully so! that is exactly what people ought to think of religious people! i am glad that the british public have the proper view that someone who is excessively religious, whose mind is filled with irrational faith-based beliefs that have no basis in fact or reality, is too nutty to be the leader of their country. unfortunately, even my favorite candidate, dennis kucinich, is a man of faith... all of the presidential candidates in both the democratic and republican parties are people of faith. it is quite a sad situation. anyway, out of the “leading” presidential candidates, the closest one to my views on all the political issues facing the united states is without a doubt barack obama. on every single one of the policy disputes he has had with hillary clinton that made the news, i found myself agreeing with him and disagreeing with hillary clinton, who always takes the more conservative policy when compared with barack obama, who is always the more liberal of the 2. i find it absolutely ridiculous how much republicans and conservatives hate hillary clinton and how much they claim she is a far-left-wing liberal in disguise. i would really like it if that were the case! i would really like it if, secretly, hillary clinton were as far left-wing as dennis kucinich on all the issues. but sadly, that is not the case. in fact, she is almost as right-wing as rudolph giuliani. most of their positions on the issues are indistinguishable. of course, rudolph giuliani is far too liberal on many issues to be a conservative republican. hillary clinton and rudolph giuliani are basically both diehard centrists. now mitt romney is the guy who used to be liberal on all the issues but is now conservative on all the issues, unlike giuliani, who is still liberal on all the social issues, just like arnold schwarzenegger, the governor of california (who is not running for president). fred thompson is a hollywood actor that richard nixon called “dumb as hell”, and used to be a pro-abortion lobbyist, and his campaign is going nowhere. john mccain is hated among republicans for his correct stances on immigration, campaign finance reform, and torture, stances that are quite unpopular in his party. and ron paul is a libertarian, which is far too radical for most conservative republicans, since on many issues he actually agrees with liberals. the religious right is left with only one candidate who is actually one of them: mike huckabee. the only problems with him, as far as conservative republicans are concerned, are how he raised taxes (which is considered the worst possible thing anyone could ever do, ever, since taxes must always be cut and never ever be raised no matter how deeply the government goes into debt), and how he actually spent state money on educating children who happened to be illegal immigrants, instead of deporting them immediately. anyway, my point is, all of the republican candidates are incredibly flawed and have a ton of stances on issues that their potential supporters will all disagree with. the democrats do not seem to be as out of touch with their own base, except for hillary clinton. back in 2004, of course, joseph lieberman ran for president as a democrat, and his platform was so wildly divergent from the democratic base, so centrist and pro-republican, it was ridiculous, and he was pretty much running in the wrong party. in fact, i think rudolph giuliani is probably a better democrat than joe lieberman, in terms of how well his stances on the issues match the democratic base. rudolph giuliani and hillary clinton are basically the same thing. it is ridiculous how giuliani got the endorsement of pat robertson. that is like if adolf hitler said his favorite television show was seinfeld. anyway, i do not really know too much about john edwards, joe biden, chris dodd, bill richardson, and mike gravel (sorry if i left any out). i mostly just know about hillary clinton and barack obama, since only they get in the news, and about dennis kucinich, since he is the one i like enough to find out more about him. i feel pretty positive about all the democratic candidates except for hillary clinton. and i also feel positive about the republican ron paul. but anyway, i think the 2-party system sucks and we need more parties. or maybe no political parties at all, which is what george washington wanted. maybe political parties could get proportional representation in legislatures like congress, so if one party gets 23% of the vote nationwide, they get 23% of the seats in congress. i also think unicameral legislatures are more efficient, and executives like governors and presidents should not be allowed to veto anything. that would make things much more efficient and eliminate gridlock. executive leaders like presidents and governors need to have as little power as possible, and all that power should be transferred to legislatures. when voting for a single office, in a situation where proportional representation would not apply, it would be best to use the condorcet method of voting, or at least instant runoff voting, rather than simply having a winner-take-all system awarding the office to whoever wins a plurality (the most votes). and of course the electoral college needs to be completely thrown in the garbage and replaced with nationwide popular vote using the condorcet or instant runoff voting method. and the system of having voters in iowa and new hampshire decide who the candidates are? throw that in the garbage too. combine primaries and general elections into one single massive election that all happens at once, and the condorcet or instant runoff voting method will allow voters to pick their favorite candidate and the most popular one (or least unpopular one) will win. so why is politics a waste of time? my favorite candidate is going nowhere in the polls, and my least favorite democratic candidate is #1. i do not live in iowa or new hampshire, and i have hardly any money, so i have basically no influence at all on who gets elected. and i detest the republicans, at least in general. and i am glad none of their candidates are acceptable to them. it means less of them will vote, so the democrat will probably win. hopefully we can get a better nominee than hillary clinton as the democrat. if the republicans want a good chance in the general election, i would recommend ron paul, since, as he says, “freedom is popular”. but i am not a republican and i do not agree with ron paul on free market capitalism or about all the government agencies he wants to abolish. people might complain about oppressive governments. but look at what happened when the soviet union collapsed, or when saddam hussein’s government in iraq collapsed. the united states government might be a bit oppressive, sort of like those governments, but if ron paul is elected, his dismantling of the apparatus of government oppression might happen too quickly, and cause disorder and chaos, a rise in crime, economic collapse, major increases in pollution, or other problems. who knows what would happen if we legalize everything, dismantle all the government agencies, and deregulate everything? we all would like a little more freedom, but perhaps ron paul would give us too much freedom... he would give us enough rope to hang ourselves. i am not sure if we need this united states government, but i think we probably do, and it would be risky to try experimenting with anything too close to anarchy like libertarianism. anyway, ron paul has no chance of being elected as the republican nominee, regardless. that is unfortunate, though, because i think he would help advance the national debate a lot if he were the republican nominee, even though i think a lot of his policies might be dangerous. but you know what? hillary clinton has been my senator for 7 years and all i know is she voted for the patriot act and the war in iraq and i am not sure what else she has done, but i disagree with her overly interventionist foreign policy positions, since she wants to basically control the governments of every country in the entire world, once she is president (i exaggerate a bit but you get the point). barack obama is still a bit interventionist but he is not afflicted as severely, and he is more prone to having us mind our own damn business for a change and stop messing around in things that are none of our business that will only get us into trouble with “blowback” about our foreign policy fiascos. like for instance, iran. hillary clinton has a tough stance against iran, possibly a pro-war hawkish stance, whereas barack obama is basically antiwar. one thing i don’t like about joe biden is he has a plan to partition iraq, which is pretty much just a case of us meddling in iraq’s internal affairs, something that is none of our business. it is up to the iraqis how to govern themselves, as long as terrorists do not take over that country’s government and attack the united states from abroad. we have no business telling iraqis to undo de-baathification or pass an oil law or form a coalition government with the sunnis. and if the kurds want independence for kurdistan, fine. it is none of our business. as for the israeli-palestinian dispute, it is also none of our business. we should not be subsidizing the israelis or the palestinians with aid from our government. and if they want to negotiate, let them do it on their own. there is no need for a mediator. getting a mediator and traveling across the world to america is a waste of time for them. the israeli and palestinian leaders ought to sit down and meet in jerusalem or somewhere close by, and meet every single day until they have peace. but that is just a suggestion. we americans, on the other hand, ought to mind our own business, and not directly interfere in such things, only offer polite suggestions like that. most of our so-called “allies” in the middle east are actually, in some ways, functioning as our enemies. iraq, saudi arabia, israel, qatar, pakistan, turkey, and others... all of those nations are supposedly our allies, but have done things that are not exactly what you would consider the behavior of a true ally, or of someone you would want to be allies with. so why do we only have 3 official enemies in the middle east (iran, syria, and hamas-controlled gaza strip)? our leaders have cozied up to the leaders of other countries that are not really our friends, but just pretend to be our friends. and we give out lots of aid, for free. aid to the militaries of totalitarian theocratic regimes, to help oppress their own people. but anyway, politics is a waste of time. there is nothing i can do about any of this. i am helpless to solve any of the world’s problems. i have virtually no say in who gets elected, and once elected, the politicians will do whatever the hell they want, without regard to public opinion, since they will just use the corporate media to disseminate their propaganda and get people to agree with whatever policies they decide to put in place. public opinion will change to match whatever the politicians want it to be, when they use the media to manipulate the public. and both political parties will cooperate in this. but joining or voting for a “third” party is a waste of time and a wasted vote. it will only make things worse. ralph nader got george w. bush elected, since nader mainly kept liberals from voting for al gore, while having no effect on conservatives. in our current winner-take-all system, third parties can only act as spoilers, and the only real way to have influence is to take part in choosing major-party candidates through the primaries. but i learned in 2004, when my favorite candidate howard dean did quite badly in the primaries, how flawed that system is, and how the stupidest voters are the swing group that ends up deciding everything. people were so focused on finding someone who fit an arbitrary media-created definition of “electable”, they completely lost sight of all of the issues. iowa and new hampshire are all about pandering to locals, and those states are almost all white people, and more conservative than the average state. so ethnic/racial minorities have pretty much zero influence in choosing who wins. the entire system is corrupt, because whoever raises the most money wins, and you raise money by selling out to the special interest groups whose interests pretty much always are the exact opposite of the general public interest. and the way things are turning out with the bushes and the clintons, we might as well have a hereditary monarchy, since that is basically what this country seems to be turning into. what will the line of succession be? george h. w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, hillary clinton, jeb bush, chelsea clinton, jenna bush, paris hilton, britney spears, lindsey lohan, hannah montana? well if so, i hope we get to the post-jenna-bush phase soon, when paris hilton becomes president. then we will finally be out of the monotony of alternating between bushes and clintons. of course, all of those young ladies will have married into the bush and clinton families by then! so it will be george h. w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, hillary clinton, jeb bush, chelsea clinton, jenna bush, paris clinton, britney bush, lindsey clinton, hannah bush! why? because most women still change their last name when they marry! we will never get out of this endless repeating loop! if only immigrants were allowed to be president! then henry kissinger could save us, with his secret doomsday device! i actually have a proposal for a doomsday device. the heaviest naturally occurring element on earth is uranium, and gravity naturally pulls most of the planet’s uranium into the inner core. simply drill a hole to the center of the earth and drop a nuclear bomb down there. since the center of earth’s core is made of highly fissionable uranium, a nuclear chain reaction would be triggered, causing a huge explosion that would blow the entire planet into itty bitty bits. all life forms on earth, even cockroaches, would be completely exterminated. no more need to call tom delay, the exterminator! all thanks to the doomsday device, which would save us from the endlessly repeating cycle of bushes and clintons. of course, we could just vote for someone else. but that would be too easy. and how could we ever get enough people across america to mobilize for a vote that is for neither a bush nor a clinton? are human beings even physically capable of voting for candidates whose last names are neither bush nor clinton? only time will tell. but as for me, i have not donated any money at all to any political candidates. and i am glad about that. it would be a waste for me to give money to a politician, since i would get nothing in return. they would only end up losing the election, and someone i hate would win anyway, like always. that is the genius of american democracy. the nation is always led by someone who is universally despised by half the population. and we spend so much time arguing amongst ourselves, we are ripe targets for foreigners to attack. it is impossible for us to unite behind a single leader because we all hate each other. instead of hating hate and fearing fear, we hate fear and fear hate. we have had the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and even the war on christmas. which comes next? world war 3 or civil war 2? we can only unite as a nation if we have a common enemy that everyone in our nation can fight, such as the rest of the world combined. that adds up to about 200 nations that would be our enemies in the war on anti-america (anti-america is everything that is not america). since we have already alienated the rest of the world and become the most hated and feared nation in the world, it is time to exercise our national sovereignty by declaring all alliances and treaties with other nations null and void, and declaring war on every single nation in the entire world, including ourselves. then we can pursue the goal of complete world domination and a pax americana that would happen afterwards, using the doomsday device as a negotiating tool. we can follow andy rooney’s advice and make english the only language in the entire world. it will be the end of history, as predicted by francis fukayama. the bush-clinton dynasty will alternate in control of the entire globe... a new world order. of course, none of this will happen unless i get the doomsday device built for henry kissinger. if the doomsday device is not built, the world will be taken over by islamic fundamentalist fire-breathing dragons, illegal aliens from outer space, and giant lesbian marxist gorillas... that is, prior to the robocratic revolution.