Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
Some excellent posts  And thanks again, Platapus.
^ Vienna i wish people would elect other people only by what they promise and their beforehand published plans what they intend to do. And instantly thrown out when deviating from course.
But even then we will have people for or against abortion, religion, envy, hate and so on.
But e.g. looking at Facebook i see so much nonsense and hate and foolishness that i fear a democratic election based on facts with people having common sense and at least a tiny bit of empathy towards their brethren, will never happen with the current systems, and mindset.
I see this new power constellation from Putin to Trump to LePen, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, England's Brexit and still wonder how this happened. The future cannot depend on single nations each with their own Extrawurst trying to strangle or dominate their neighbours or the world; but if it continues or even falls back as it happened now, it will destroy mankind sooner or later. And if we don't get out of this i think we deserve no better. |
Oh, I do agree there will always be pro and con on any issue; that is very much a given. What is repugnant is the blind adherence to a party's candidate or issues solely because a person "belongs" to a particular party. How many times have we seen, just in these forums, and elsewhere, the expression of sentiments along the lines of and such as 'well, I don't agree with [insert candidate or issue here], but I am a loyal member of my party, so, I'm gonna vote for them/it, anyway'? Now, more than ever, the blacks and whites of issues and candidates, take greater shades of greys. The absolutist lines of party politics are blurred. As Platapus pointed out [aside: no, really, seriously - Platapus for President], there used to Liberal Republicans (Nelson Rockefeller was a favorite of mine) and there used to be Conservative Democrats (e.g., Truman); and there used to be Moderates in both the major parties , or as they were sometimes called, the Middle-Of-The-Roaders. There may not be a lot of self-acknowledged Middle-Of-The-Roaders around anymore, but there is a growing number of self-acknowledged Independents...
I noted in a previous post the curious case of Orange County in California, a long-time highly conservative, very GOP stronghold in the state: for the first time since 1936, a period of 80 years, the county gave the Presidential win to a Democratic candidate, Clinton. At first, I thought well, maybe Clinton won because there was a low voter turnout: the final turnout in Orange was a whopping 80.7%, impressive, given the national turnout total was about 55%. I then checked the registration percentages before the election by party: 41.8% GOP; 31.7% DEM; the rest 26.5% either other parties or Independents, so the GOP still held the lead in registrations. Then I looked at the actual percentage totals for the candidates: 50.9% Clinton; 42.3% Trump; 6.8% other candidates/parties. What is amazing is Trump only managed to get .5% more votes than the total of registered GOP voters. Safely assuming not every single GOP voter cast a ballot for Trump, what this means is not only did Trump lose GOP votes, he also failed to sway any sizable number of Independents; and that's were the crux lies: in Orange, the importance of the Independents, comprising about a quarter of the registered voters, has now become more key to the fates of both the major parties than each parties own membership. Given that nationwide both the major parties have been steadily losing registered voters, not to each others parties, but to the growing number of independents and alternate parties, the overall influence of the majors on the electorate seems to waning. Maybe what were seeing is the emergence of a new, non-party specific middle of the road...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ikalugin
I don't know how it works in US, but in Russia some parties and movements seem to be openly unpatriotic/anti-russian.
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Openly unpatriotic to who: the USA or Russia? If your worry is about Russia, no fears: Vlad's boyfriend takes over on Friday...
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