*Sigh*

If it makes you feel any better Mac, it's all still the same to me. Don too, I'm betting.

We are losing. All of us. In subtle, insidious ways that we barely notice. I do notice that people on the far extremes of the spectrum seem to be more invested in the process and the outcome. I stand in the center, and I do care. I just don't know how to fix it. And I have no idea what the best choices are.

I will frequently say that we've had so many years of separation, segregation, and finger pointing that we've lost sight of how to work as one unit and compromise to do what's best for everyone.

Heaven forbid a compromise because it means one side doesn't get everything it wants and it doesn't crush the opposition.

Maybe it's time to quit dividing, since politicians have fully conquered the US People, and start rebuilding?

This is the weirdest, most frustrating, and yes, SCARY presidential election I have ever experienced. And I'm not sure if that's simply because I'm no longer too young to notice, or too busy in college/grad school, or too sleep-deprived with my babies, etc. But no, I really think it's this election. I hate it so much. It's really showing the puppet masters' control of the strings, no matter how much I'd like to convince myself otherwise. And the world seems to be in such disarray, that this POTUS must be very wise in the global sense. Not seeing that in most of these candidates. So yeah, I completely agree with you.

This is hard, because I'm heavily tilted toward one side, so maybe this opinion is the result of bias, but I feel like the current climate a lot of places is the result of the GOP's implosion. There are absolutely sane, logical, highly intelligent republicans. Their party has been taken over by such a circus that it's immensely polarizing both inside and outside the GOP.

I get there are republicans who can't support democratic candidates, and thus might feel they've got to stick by their party, but there's a lot, especially Trump-based, that's hard to defend logically. I have no idea if fewer people who support the GOP in general are commenting, leading to the tilt, or if there are fewer in toto, but I sort of think that if more candidates or the presumptive nominee were more like a Romney or even McCain, there'd be more balance, as it'd be easier to discuss stuff in a more balanced way. Again, that may be my bias, but while I disagree wholeheartedly with McCain on most stuff, and think some bad things about him, I don't think he's simply a deluded lunatic. Thus I can understand people supporting him, and figure there are discussions to be had. There are always discussions to be had, but when one person's candidate is talking the way Trump has been, I think it's harder to do.

As for the purchased politicians, I think that's been a thing close to forever in this country. You need money to run.

As long as politics is treated a game(we even root for and watch tv shows, movies etc that involve this type of behavior) it won't change. Our legal system is the same way and has been for awhile. The law isn't about finding the truth, it's about the lawyers maneuvering and manipulating the law(find loopholes to exploit and the opposition blocking them.) We teach debate in schools as if winning is the only goal instead of making it about two sides working from two perspectives to find a workable goal together.

I sometimes feel like living in a world with corporations is like living in a world with poorly socialized, half insane artificial intelligences.

So, I say, screw burning the government down. Lets break up every corporation above a certain size, redistribute the money, they resume from there...

Zoombie said:

So, I say, screw burning the government down. Lets break up every corporation above a certain size, redistribute the money, they resume from there...

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how might you achieve the latter without the former?

William Haskins said:

how might you achieve the latter without the former?

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That's...why I said "screw that." I don't think burning the government down is a good idea.

We need a Goldilocks government - neither too much, nor too little.

sigh, indeed.

Zoombie said:

Lets break up every corporation above a certain size, redistribute the money, they resume from there...

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The end result of this would be an even more unequal distribution of wealth than we currently have, imo.

Quite possibly! I just wish I knew something to do...

Zoombie said:

That's...why I said "screw that." I don't think burning the government down is a good idea.

We need a Goldilocks government - neither too much, nor too little.

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I don't think you can vote for Sanders and be consistent with what you just typed above. Government will certainly grow under Bernie.

If it makes you feel any better, Mac, I'm someone who normally leans further to the conservative side, but in the present election year as it stands, there's not much of a way to support that position without supporting people and ideals that are distasteful to more than the "left."

We're used to candidates who might be claimed by one party or another, but who ultimately in their personal claims are closer to the middle than either party purports to be. This year, that's not the case. The forum isn't unbalanced; the race itself is.

MacAllister said:

Yeah - it's like the Charlie Stross observation that corporations are essentially our alien overlords:

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For the record, I've been saying that since I've been here...

I mostly agree with Rob - humans are naturally self-interested creatures, and there will always remain a subset who are predisposed with the talent and ambition for hoarding resources. IMO, they're going to remain fairly good at doing so, no matter what restrictions are in place.

I don't have a particularly good solution, but certain members of the current crop scare the crap out of me.

eta: Also agree with Cyia.

Sigh, and sigh again, on the state of US politics.
-As far as the corporate overlords go, I agree with up thread comments and add that I knew we (collective US) were doomed when employment interviews started to required a deposit of bodily fluid. I'd rather swap spit with my dog than pee in a cup for a job.

c.e.lawson said:

I don't think you can vote for Sanders and be consistent with what you just typed above. Government will certainly grow under Bernie.

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Well, as I'm not telepathic or a clairvoyant, I cannot say that I know that a Sanders presidency would be "larger" or "smaller" , but I do know that the parts of the government I find objectionable (for instance, the military industrial complex) will be given less power and the parts that I think should exist (our social security networks) would be given more power.

See...the way I see it, conservative politicians say they want less government.

But what we've gotten is instead a government skewed towards profit and corporations.

So, I'd rather have someone who wants to bring the government back in line with what it should be doing (providing for the common good) than someone who will use my tax monies to commit war crimes like Trump.

EDIT: And just to make it clear, I'm not saying that I think Sanders would be perfect. Just of the choices offered, he's my favorite.

Gilroy Cullen said:

I will frequently say that we've had so many years of separation, segregation, and finger pointing that we've lost sight of how to work as one unit and compromise to do what's best for everyone.

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Unfortunately, as a people we seem to have lost the ability not only to work toward a common goal, but to have a common goal.

At one time, it seems to me, there was indeed a common goal and the arguments were over the best way to achieve it. For example, the big controversy over whether it was best for non English-speaking students to learn English by total immersion -- classes were to be taught only in English and they would quickly acquire the language.

On the other side was the concept the classes should be bilingual, and that way they would not only learn the subject, they would learn English much more easily.

Which approach was more correct is not relevant – my point is that both approaches had passionate advocates – but their goal, that of getting non-English speaking students to learn English, was exactly the same.

These days, I think there are very different ideas about what type of society we wish to live in. It's no longer an argument over the best way to achieve something, it's argument over what we're trying to achieve. There are still some things everyone agrees on, but they are becoming fewer with the passage of time. And that makes finding any common ground next to impossible and results in a lot of bitterness and anger on both sides.

I would also say that the strong - and confused - tendency to have "left" synonymous with "liberal" (and, to some extent, also "right" with "conservative") is not helping anything. The words aren't actually equivalent. I'm very liberal, but the far-left is too authoritarian for my sensibilities.

The whole circus is an ugly mess right now. It's depressing.

MacAllister said:

Yeah. I agree. I like Bernie on a lot of levels, but I can't in good conscience vote for him for president because I honestly don't think he's qualified -- and additionally, I do think government would grow, under a Sanders presidency, and grow in ways that penalize self-employed individuals and small-business-owners even more.

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It is not Bernie's intention to penalize the self employed or the small business owners. He is not against capitalism, just the system of capitalism where the rules are skewed towards the big corporate interests over that of the working class. Our government wastes a lot of money through corporate welfare, a bloated military budget and military contractors, farm subsidies, monetary incentives to the fossil fuel industries, as if they need any incentives, and expensive wars that we can't afford. These are government wastes that both democrats and republicans support.

Our preamble to the US constitution guarantees certain things to the people of this country and among these things are to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of prosperity to ourselves and our posterity. Bernie Sanders thinks that a country such as ours should educate its people to compete in a global market, he believes that a country such as ours should be able to provide health care to its population especially if we as a group pay for something that will benefit us all. Why shouldn't the people of this country share in the wealth of this nation? The minimum wage has not risen since I started working back in the early 70s, yet the price of living has gone up considerably since then. The system is broken and it needs to be fixed and Bernie Sanders is the only candidate willing to take on that problem.

I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative and socially liberal. I don't believe in wasting money and I see both parties guilty of doing just that. The banking system seems to gamble with our money and I see gambling as a big waste. I don't consider it a waste of money to educate the population, or to provide health care to all, or to rebuild our failing infrastructure. I can't vote republican because I believe in the freedom of our citizens to have control over our own bodies without government interference. I believe that the first amendment right of freedom of religion applies to all of us not just Christians. As a gay man I have the religious right not to live under religious laws and I have a religious right to believe that being gay and all that goes with it should not be denied me by the government. I believe in my 4th amendment right to privacy and not have those rights taken away by the Patriot Act. I do not think that the government has a right to tell, its citizens what drugs they can and can not take. I do not think that police should have the right to deny its citizens of of our civil rights. All these things are things that Bernie Sanders has fought for his entire career. So why wouldn't you support Bernie over the other candidates?