Hell No, I Won't Go... to the Polls

This has been mentioned in passing before, but this time we're going to get into my issues with the system as a whole, rather than just my issues with the Electoral College...although we'll cover those too, obviously.  Although I can understand the interpretation as such, my disgust with the voting process extends well beyond the simple "My vote doesn't count in the end, so why bother?" flavor of apathy I associate with living in a definitively "red" or "blue" state.  I understand that the system works well enough that only twice since it's inception has the electoral vote disagreed with the popular vote, it is a good system.  My issue is that this system's intended purpose is inherently flawed by way of playing into a much larger, more flawed system so effectively. Take your "best case scenario" of living in a swing state where a vote could actually make a difference between one of two people as the future leader of our country.  Why is it only one of two people!?  There are so many candidates that run, yet every state is either red or blue when the big map goes up on the screen.

The electoral system plays into a party system and the entire party system seems designed to distill candidates down into two big droplets on the American attention span with one sticking briefly before they all fall back into a pool of "they're all the same"ness.  That's my sticking point though, they, the political parties, are all the same.  A Democracy is defined as a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.  A Republic is defined as a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.  These are our two major parties; read as: the only ones with an actual shot at winning.  Those of you saying "hey wait, it means something different in this context though..."  yeah...no, sorry but fuck you, it really doesn't.  

We identify the Republican party as the more conservative party just as we view the Democrats as the more liberal, but these are completely malleable alignments.  If you go back as little as to the early 1960's, these ideologies were flipped.  That's right, the Dems were the conservative ones while the Reps took up the liberal saber.  This.  Shit.  Is.  Completely.  Arbitrary.  How many people identify themselves as Democrat or Republican but end up disagreeing with more of their "party's" ideals than agree with them?  Fuck if I know, but it's probably around the same number of party members that disagree with more ideals and stances of their party's chosen representative than agree with them.  So why still march under those banners?  Because you have to pick a side...?

In order to vote you must register, and when you register you do so as a Democrat, Republican or Independent.  Yup.  There's apparently Democrat, Republican and Everything Else.  Think of the effect just knowing that has on the average vote; the "Independents" are so hopeless and insignificant that they all have to share an identity as a party.  So because the voter knows this, he or she "knows" that the best case scenario when voting for an independent is that neither the Republican nor Democrat will get a vote.  What we get is voters who may have voted for another candidate voting for one that's "close enough" because the perception is that only one of two parties can actually win.  But then if you don't happen to live in a swing state, not voting at all is going to have just as much effect as anything else on which candidate your state actually "counts" toward.  So even most people that "get out and vote" are aware, to some extent, that their vote is largely meaningless.  Whether or not you can even register to vote is just as, if not more, arbitrary.

They say that with age comes wisdom, but I say that wisdom comes to some a little faster than to others.  I've known plenty of sub-18 year-olds with a better handle on what each candidate actually has planned for their time in office than the people deemed mature enough to have a say in whose plan gets to be executed.  If you're going to impose restrictions on such an important decision, can we at least have them achieve some modicum of reasoned thought?  Instead of just "Yup, you're old enough, go ahead and pick the name from this list" how about "Write me an essay explaining why you agree with your chosen candidate and their plan for our country."  That way if 14-year-old Billy wants to vote for Randy Republican because he agrees with that specific candidates plan for our military, economy, healthcare, foreign policy, and/or etc. his vote gets thrown on the pile.  If 42-year-old Sally wants to vote for Leo Liberal because he believes in America and that Randy wants to destroy America however it's "I'm sorry ma'am, please try again."  Because too many people vote for a candidate just because s/he's a Republican, or a woman, or white, or friendlier or more attractive.  Take as much time and as many attempts as you need, but put forth the effort to educate yourself about the decision.  This is a decision that, under absolutely optimal circumstances, affects the future of every man woman and child in the country, you'd better know exactly what it is you're actually deciding. 

While we're at it, stop with the parties.  It's a mental game that only clutters up what should be a smooth, straightforward process of choosing the individual person that is going to take office.  You are not electing a whole party, as we already discussed, these fuckers can't even agree with themselves so stop lumping them all together and claiming it's for my benefit.  If you create a system that not only gives prideworthy weight to each citizens vote, but also allows any citizen to honestly express their choice in leader you get voters that are educated about how the system works from the formerly ignorant, disinterested or just plain disgusted individuals muddying it up.

But we don't have that system, which is why I'll be the disgusted fleck of dirt clinging to the side until someone with the power says "Hey, maybe we should try and clean this shit up so it works better, huh?"

Why America Is Broken And Why it's Not Up To The Middle Class To Fix It

It seemed about time that Stupid weighed in on the issues of wealth imbalance and class warfare in this country. With the issue at the forefront of so many Americans minds it has reached a boiling point that many are so fearful of that some individuals on one side of the argument have even started creating government legislation that helps protect them from action taken by the opposing side. This issue may very well determine whether American can continue on as a country or a radical revolution takes place. It is also an issue that seems to be caused by a widespread infection of the horrible disease known as Stupid.

Whether it's someone speaking on Fox News, facebook or right in front of me, I have heard the argument that the middle and lower class "Just hate the wealthy due to jealousy of their wealth" using almost those exact words. This is a mind-boggling statement that appears symptomatic of a Limbaugh-Palin level infection of Stupid. This is not why we hate you, at all. Even saying that we hate you is a bit much. We are disappointed in, or even disgusted by the way that you use that wealth.

The problem is not that the top 1% of income earners in this country have so much, it's that they don't use that money well. Rather than being put to use pushing mankind forward as a society, it is hoarded and spent on status symbols that serve only as a way to prove to the rest of the world how much money you have. Money is the lifeblood of economy, a system that has gradually replaced natural selection as a way to determine which members of the species survive, it is NOT meant to be used as a trophy. If money had not take the place of natural selection and we lived in a world where people's survival was based solely on their ability to collect enough food to survive would we still allow a small group of people to hoard food that they don't need or will ever use while others starved to death?

I'm not saying that all poor people are saints, some of them made poor decisions that led them to that state, but entirely too many of them were forced there by something completely out of their control. Allowing these people (and, I would think, any human being) to be unjustly punished and left to die and other miserable fates is wrong. If you disagree with THAT, then you need to do a serious re-evaluation of your moral priorities. I'm also not claiming that all rich people are heartless hoarders. There are some truly good people of great wealth, like Bill Gates, who want to pay higher taxes because they understand that they have more money that is necessary for them to live at whatever level of comfort they want. (Sidebar: This is especially ironic when you consider how vilified Bill Gates generally is in the public compared to Steve Jobs, who was very vocal about his belief that he was being forced to pay too much in taxes despite the significantly higher profit margin for Apple products compared to Microsoft products [Think about that for a minute and ask yourself if you believe in Karma]) But that's just it, the good people, who perpetrate none of the offenses I name in my original statement, are not applicable to it. So bringing them up as some kind of proof that the whole argument is wrong fails on a very basic level of constructing a proper counterpoint.

I'm a fairly simple guy that doesn't require much to live comfortably. Give me a clean space to live that's large enough to hold my bed and all my video game/computer equipment, because that's my passion and a necessary component of my career, and I'm a happy man. The sub-30k salary I collect per year is just barely enough to do this, with some skillful juggling. I understand that different people have different lifestyles that require greater or lesser amounts of wealth to maintain. The problem is with the people that feel the need to collect so much wealth that they can't use even half of it without inventing new ways to do so (designer labels, limited editions, etc.) for the one and only purpose of displaying a certain social status to the rest of the world.

Money or wealth, despite being purely abstract concepts (a whole other argument I don't have time for), are still more or less finite; if you add it to one place that means you have to take it from somewhere else. Taking it from somewhere else means taking it from someone else by pretty much whatever means necessary. All too often this means taking away a person's home, food, car, health, child and/or life. Let me be cleat: no person should EVER be forced to sacrifice any of these things for the sake of a person's social status, an abstract concept that contributes absolutely nothing to the progress or well-being of the human race.

The sad reality is that 40-50% of the wealth of the entire country is in the possession and control of only 1% of the population; i.e. this is a fact. That means that the wealth of the United States is divided into two groups that consist of "small handful of people" and "everyone else". This distribution of wealth is directly responsible for people being forced out of their homes and into the streets by circumstances completely beyond their control that are in no way their fault. This is morally, ethically, and in all other ways wrong. This small handful of people hoarding that wealth are in such denial of this that they refuse to try and rectify it in any way, whether that be to pay a greater share of the taxes or take a pay cut in order to preserve the jobs of hundreds or even thousands of their workers. Anyone that disagrees with this is in an equally ludicrous level of denial or simply to naive to be aware of how things really are.

I am of the belief that it is not the sole responsibility of the wealthy upper class to ensure people aren't unjustly forced from their homes and left to live as a destitute. My issue is that they don't seem to feel the same way in regard to the middle class, somehow believing it is up to us to fill the vacuum left in the lower classes by sharing the income that barely enables us to live a life already without luxury or excess. Someone needs to pick up the slack in order to save this country from facing either a collapse or a violent revolution, and it is truly a stupid person that believes it should be the middle class.