Allowing Partisan Politics To Define America
15 April 2007
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” It’s hard to embrace something when you don’t know where it stands.” I would say that is a true statement, but I don’t understand why it would be applicable in this context. Why would anyone want to embrace a specific political ideology (like ‘Republican’ or Democrat’) as opposed to having their own ideology based on careful study of facts and opinions.
It seems as though the character in the first strip has already made up her mind that she will stand for whatever it is the Republicans stand for, and she’s slightly dismayed that she can’t figure out exactly what that is. What’s crazy it that it seems that a huge portion of Americans think like this, both Democrat and Republican. They decide what political ideology to subscribe to, and then look to political leaders to tell them what to believe.
Are we that uninformed that we need people to tell us what we should and shouldn’t believe in? If we all truly made a concerted effort to look at various issues from all sides, and used logic and reason to determine the best point of view, I think we’d find that we all have a lot more in common than we think. Instead, we allow the media, political pundits, cable news windbags, and scheming politicians to define our beliefs.
Candidates from the same parties don’t always agree on various issues. Political pundits generally say this makes a party “weak”, and maybe they’re right, but as I said earlier, there are far more than two “sides” to any given issue, and allowing politicians to define for use two nicely packaged positions, and given a choice between the two does no one any favors. The only ones that benefit from this watering down of complex issues are the politicians themselves, who now find it easy to rally the troops behind them under one banner.
Political parties (and party loyalty) will be the downfall of this country. The two parties take every issue, divide it into “sides”, and then choose one to defend. In many cases, the two sides aren’t really that different, but the politicians will have you believe that you’re looking at night and day when you compare the two. If the parties seem to agree on a hot topic, they are no longer well-defined, and therefore voters may lose their loyalty to one side. As such, they make a point to disagree about every single thing.
When two parties disagree about nearly every issue, just for the sake of disagreement, it polarizes the public, and allows no beneficial work to actually get done. Every vote, every speech, every single thing the politician does is for the sake of political posturing to help him get elected the next term, or help his party. It disgusts me, and I don’t understand why more people don’t share my sentiment.
So that’s my rant. I encourage you all to disassociate yourself from a specific political party, think logically and rationally about hot-button issues, and really look into every candidate in an election before deciding who to vote for. You may be surprised to find that a 3rd-party candidate holds views much more similar to yours than a Democrat or Republican. Above all, don’t allow partisan politics to continue to define who you are and what you stand for.
Article Source: Comicstrippolitics
