I'm still impressed by American politics; both ends of the spectrum. It's just this amazingly childish system that seems to exist within its own little bubble where even the 'personal attacks' are, well... just disconnected from anything that makes any objective sense whatsoever. Using them in real life (i.e. outside of a pants-on-head-retarded political discussion) would just get you laughed at, rather than actually insult or hurt anyone.
"Obama is bad because this preacher he was sortof associated with said THIS!"
"Oh yeah? well guess what, the guy running that ad campaign? After 9/11, he suggested that it was probably as a result of prior actions taken by the US government! What a stupid dick!"
"well you know what? You love letting people do what they want!"
"fuck you you dick, I bet if you were in charge, you'd probably want to give money to hospitals or something!"
"Money? I bet if you had your way, we'd live in some sort of egalitarian utopia where people don't need money anymore! C'mon guys, let's stop these bastards before they implement their insane 'eternal happiness and world peace' schemes!"
And so on. Please note that I'm not bothering to differentiate between the major party positions; to an outsider they're essentially schizophrenic and/or interchangeable. I'm quite sure there's some systematic differences there but it's basically like a magic eye puzzle; only sortof noticeable if you stare long enough that your eyes water up and you can't see very well anymore.
It just reminds me of that rather simplistic explanation (probably too simplistic, for anyone who actually knows history) of the fall of the Byzantine Empire I once heard; The reason they fell wasn't due to financial issues; the spice roads were apparently still very lucrative and Constantinople was still the richest, most powerful city in the world. It wasn't really due to structural issues; the Byzantine empire had inherited the West Roman Empire's excellent infrastructure/governmental concepts and combined them with eastern knowledge and culture, making it arguably even more a solid institution than the more-famous Western Roman Empire had been. It wasn't even due to military reasons; had they mustered their armies properly and at sensible times they could've stopped the muslim advancements fairly early on, maintained their borders and avoided that whole "invasion" thing. The empire crumbled and eventually fell because for generations the various forms of leadership of the empire did nothing but engage in short-sighted, asinine little political games and spent all of their time and energy on trying to become the next leaders of the empire. Once they were in power, they either got booted out/assassinated by the next person/faction or they focused all their attention on not getting booted out by the next person/faction.
There were no substantial reforms or efforts by those in charge because they lived in their own little bubbles of political games and bullshit. As a result, the empire stagnanted, fell apart and was eventually conquered by a guy who essentially amounted to being "a reasonably successful and opportunistic king". No-one with the power to change anything was able or willing to do so because they had to keep playing their bullshit games and focus all their attentions on dealing with the trivial issue of the day, like "Why do we keep letting Catholics do whatever it is they keep doing? Fuck those guys!" or "Seashells are immoral, let's do something about that!". Meanwhile when the entire province of somewhere-ia secceeds or another general deserts or the taxation revenue dips another 10% for no simple, obvious reason, the discussion is not "let's actually address that, find out what went wrong and maybe do something to stop that happening again", it just becomes "that's totally the fault of those other guys. Fuck them! Give me control of everything and I'll probably fix it with... stuff! Also seashells are immoral!"
Anyway, like I said. Incredibly basic, probably severely factually flawed and more divorced from the actual story I heard with every passing sentence (and yes, I just made up the reference to seashells. Couldn't think of anything better), but it's just what comes to mind every time I see American political debates. I mean, I hate Australian politics and it's probably going to follow the US' lead pretty closely for a long time, but in a kind of 'sad-bright-side' way, even when I've lost all hope for my governmental system and can't see any good chances for it to improve for the better, I can at least look at the USA and realise it's not yet that far gone, all things considered.
edit: Before anyone asks where the hell I'm getting my facts from, it's 6am and I've been awake since 7am yesterday, with 3 classes, 2 meetings, a quite long discussion with my partner about serious things, a bunch of hours on assignments and 6 hours at work in-between that time then and now. That's probably why this post is here and seems to be some sort of rant about the Byzantine empire. I dunno. It felt pretty important while I was typing it and I think it deserves at least some sort of recognition for having the bravery to be so very long at such an early time of the morning. I mean, there's sunlight coming through my curtains. Actual freakin' sunlight. I do know that the fortifications of Constantinople were really kickass and based around a concentric ring design, but during that last siege, severely undermanned and most of the defenders were mercenaries, then the guy who captured it was really civil and didn't kill everyone, which was pretty nice for the time. So at the end of the day and you're wondering what's going to happen in the future, there's always that story to hold onto.
...I'm gonna go to bed. I have research reports due now. This is totally probably not a problem. My point was not invalidated by this last paragraph, it was still a relevant observation and I'm pretty sure the story was mostly true. I'll check it tomorrow today.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 764060 times)