You know, it would be refreshing to actually talk about politics instead of people. Here's a challenge: Describe what actions you want your elected representatives to take (or even what general polices they should have), without mentioning any specific individuals or political groups. I'll start.
I want my president to step back from the legislative side of things. Be a diplomat, a strategist, and an executive first, a legislator fourth. As a diplomat, I want the president to see to it that the US doesn't sabotage its relationship to its allies with spying. As a strategist, my President would stop counterproductive torture with an executive order, and furthermore would clean house in the intelligence community to eliminate the systemic rot that produces a torture-based-intelligence program. In both of these roles, the President would distance the USA from "Enemy Alies" such as Saudi Arabia, and put a stop to the extraordinary military aid to Israel. Nothing against Israel, it's just that the US President is President of the US, and not President of, for instance, Israel. Most important, my hypothetical president would be the executive. The buck stops on his desk. The excuse "I didn't know about that" is a deeper shame, for this president, than any other admission of guilt. It's impossible to know about every action the government takes, this is true, but a skilled president builds a staff of honorable and trustworthy people. When this organization fails to detect, let alone prevent, misgovernment, it is an impeachment of the the President directly. My President takes his role as leader of an organization seriously, and when problems arise, as they inevitably will, he has the initiative and sense of justice to acknowledge his failings and to correct the system so it can't happen again.
My Congress is a different beast entirely. Perhaps it is mythical one, for if my President is a saint, my Congress is a congregation. I would be happy if I could vote for one person who could move the current congress closer to my ideal.
This congress realizes that capitalism, as it now exists, is only growing more unfair. Some would say it's socialist; I would say that is an accurate description. In particular: past a personal income of $1,000,000,000 annually, 100% of wealth will be taxed. Incomes Under $100,000 annually are tax-free, and everyone receives a basic income sufficient to live comfortably (circa $20,000, but calculated on a basket of basic supplies annualy). For-profit corporations are banned, and any non-profit corporations can be dissolved if they commit crimes. Medical care is free, as is education. After all that, however, the minimum wage is reduced substantially, as the poor now work to supplement basic income rather than to survive. Low minimum wages thus allow new businesses to grow.
There are strict regulations on pollution, and it is illegal to import goods that come from nations that do not match those standards, as well as standards of human rights. This involves breaking numerous trade agreements. So be it.
The biggest change the congress can bring to human rights in this country is to enforce the laws on the books. Religion, speech, and identity are protected. Government spying on citizens is banned, and people have security in their persons and papers, and in their homes. The United States protects the liberty of other countries by making it incredibly easy and wealth-producing for other governments to join us in secular liberty, and pauperizing and isolating to fail to do so, with the trade regulations I mentioned above.
Three hot-button topics that always seem to come up in American politics:
I really don't care what this congress does with guns. I rather enjoy target shooting myself, and if you thought the rest of this post was naive, then let me tell you that the idea of confiscating or effectively regulating guns in the USA is utterly absurd. In line with a statistical approach, let's focus on more serious threats like traffic accidents and heart disease and then reconsider guns.
As for abortions, we've been arguing about them for more than a hundred years, and there's no conclusion yet because it frankly deals with a fundamentally unanswered philosophical question: what makes a human being human. A secular viewpoint will lean towards a measurable quantity, while a moral viewpoint will lean towards an inherent quality. There is no productive gain in siding with either element, although a universal health care program (which is essential to the basic income program,) demands some kind of answer. However, in the context of a medical procedure, it is clearly not the congress' position to choose what is right- that is a medical decision. Some will see this as wishy-washy when it should be emphatic, but I maintain that it is one of the few ideological issues in modern politics because it is based on a fundamental ideological difference between left and right, and as such requires neutrality.
Drugs: A recreational activity in moderation, a medical issue when too common. The very worst drugs are only used because the better stuff is hard to get. This is not an issue for the Congress, not initially. First the President needs to decend in thunder, lightning and loud trumpet's sound upon the prison-legal complex and smite the corruption out of the high-school-to-correctional-chain. Only when the last for-profit prison warden is locked in solitary can justice be done with drug law. The funny thing is that I personally am a teetotaler, but that's how it goes.
For the amount that people have been talking about this election, there's been precious little discussion about actual
Author
Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1582824 times)