I have mentioned it before, but a large percentage of the US population are registered as Independents. I am one of them because I don't really identify with either major party although if I had to choose one at gunpoint it would be Republican. This would be a reluctant move on my part but I do agree with much of what Republicans say, the problem I have with them is that they so rarely follow through on basically anything.
The problem with both parties in my mind is that there really isn't that much of a difference between them outside of the things that they talk about. I call this political posturing and that might be an official term. I don't care enough to actually look it up.
Nothing ever changes outside of temporary things that just get reversed by the next President anyway and I honestly can't think of anything that any President has done in my lifetime that was particularly memorable or different. All of them keep overseeing a government that spends much more than it takes in and while what they are spending the money on changes, the overall over-spending remains the same.
I don't remember where I saw this so I can't post a source for it but the sentiment stands.
I can't even say if it is true or not but it seems about right. One only need look at the national debt over my lifetime to see that spending is completely out of control and nobody seems to want to even talk about it other than Libertarians, who never win elections anyway.
If any private business or even you as an individual spent money like this you would be out of business or in jail - perhaps both. Yet the government, regardless of whether it is D or R controlled at the time continues down this path of self-destruction and nobody seems to really care.
I recall when I was a kid that there was a national debt clock in NYC or something and it was meant to be alarming. People actually, at least for a little while, started to think that "free" was a word that the government should never be using. How quickly we forget though.
When they initially made this thing I don't think anyone could have imagined that there wasn't going to be enough digits on the damn thing to accommodate the future.
This is why I honestly don't really care who gets elected on a national level anymore. Spending beyond our means has become par for the course and nobody really seems to care. Any official that tells the truth and says that we have to reel in our spending will not get elected because so much of what politicians promise to their potential supporters involves spending MORE, not less. Voters who want entitlement programs, handouts, bailouts, or even increased or sustained spending on the military are very short-sighted in this regard and the only viable politician that I can even think of that addressed this issue at all was Ron Paul.... and we all witnessed what the media and other politicians did to that guy.
I can't really fully support any candidate that doesn't address this very real problem and all of them know that if you even talk about cutting certain programs, no matter what that program is or how wasteful and incompetent its management is, the "other side" is going to blow it up to make said politician look like the devil.
Take the EPA for example. I have worked alongside the EPA for over a decade. I have never seen such gross negligence, wasteful spending, or incompetence in any other aspect of my life as when I was working alongside the EPA but I kept my mouth shut because opening it is an act of futility and I was actually profiting by working with them. The contract bids that I put in for work with the EPA were ludicrous and no private firm would ever have accepted them. The EPA just approves basically anything regardless of the cost and when I did bid I submitted the bid with a sort of smirk on my face thinking "there's no way they are going to pay that much for this service." Yet most of the time they did and I can only assume that this is because the decision makers inside the EPA don't actually have any idea how much any of the work that they do should or could cost.
Yet, if any politician ever started to talk about overhauling the EPA he or she would be labeled as a climate denier or someone who doesn't give a damn about the environment. You know it is true.
The two-party system is basically a guarantee of failure because nobody can actually fix what needs to be fixed without being wrongfully vilified by the system.
I wish more people would wake up and realize this but basically everyone I know or just read about online is so blinded by the hatred of the other side that they can't realize that their side is just as bad. Sadly, I don't see this ever changing because it is very rare that I ever meet anyone who can see that what you think is over there, is also over here.
