Today Americans will be voting for their next president. Will Barak Obama get a second term? Will Mitt Romney become the new president?
I lived in America for a few years, long enough to compare it with other countries, so I feel qualified to say that the result doesn't really matter. People who have lived in America all their lives are blind to the fact that the present two-party system gives them no choice. There might be slight differences on issues of government control and taxation, but the bottom line is that both parties are right wing parties, one leaning slightly more right than the other. Only slightly.
Did the Americans really think that Obama would take the troops out of Afghanistan four years ago? Obama said he would, and the Americans were foolish enough to believe him. He never intended to do it for one moment. It was just election rhetoric to make himself the world's most powerful man.
America needs a real change. The only way to do this is to create a third political party. And a fourth. Maybe more. To take an example from Germany, there are six parties represented in the current central government:
Christian Democratic Union: 31%
Social Democratic Party: 24%
Free Democratic Party: 15%
Communist Party: 12%
Green Party: 11%
Christian Socialist Union: 7%
Social Democratic Party: 24%
Free Democratic Party: 15%
Communist Party: 12%
Green Party: 11%
Christian Socialist Union: 7%
I'm not saying that I support any or all of the above parties. All I'm saying is that the Germans have a choice. The Americans don't. So be naive. Go out and cast your ballot today. Whoever wins, the next four years will be the same as the last four. The only hope for America is to start work on a new political party that will be able to make a real difference.
You are right but...I'd rather have Obama in office than some dude who thinks god actually talks to him and thinks that women can self abort if they've been raped. :/ It may not change a lot, but at least that fuck head would be out of the spotlight degrading women.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that people shouldn't vote. Without voting there is no democracy. Whatever country people live in people should judge the candidates who present themselves and pick the one they consider best. All I'm saying is that America doesn't have much of a choice.
DeleteMaybe it's America's own fault. The anti-Communist paranoia of the 1960's prevents a left wing party being a viable option for voters. To stand a chance of success, presidential candidates have to be right wing and Christian, whatever their party.
That is very true. Most of this country is over run with religious fanatics. It always comes down to the lesser of two evils. It's a shame propaganda gets flung around so freely amongst the masses. Ignorance is America's biggest problem.
DeleteI've long referred to our two-party system as "Freedom Lite"
ReplyDeleteThe example i typically used to explain it was that they've already decided you're having hamburger for dinner. They fight bitterly over whether it'll be a Big Mac or a Whopper, but it's all surface. Anything else - Chicken, Pizza, Lobster... that's off the menu. You're getting a damn hamburger, now shut up and fight!
Of course, things have mutated these days with the Republican morph into the American Not-See Party where the outer world is invisible to them. The entire system has been broken for a long time, but now it's becoming completely non-functional. We're down to one party's answers to problems, no matter how questionable some of those answers might be. Or you can hide from reality in a child's fantasy world.
We're screwed.
In my humble opinion, there never used to be much difference between the Republican and Democrat parties. Subtle differences in matters of gun control and abortion, but the new president never did much different to the last. That changed with Donald Trump. His biggest achievement is that he's divided America.
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