wall of text approaching... to address briks/peter joseph/etc on "why not vote..."
when i really think about it, deep down, beyond all of the rationalizations, i'm just lazy. and sort of apathetic. i think maybe you guys are right that i should vote. i could come up with a complex rationalization for why i shouldn't. but deep down i think really i just don't feel like standing in line to vote just so obama can win over mitt romney or hillary can win over ted cruz. and also... i really dislike the way that politicians and their supporters come across. and i prefer not to be associated with them.
i won't say there's no difference between the parties.. because there are. but as far as i can see it, in terms of economic policies, this country seems to be on a more or less gradual shift towards the right for the past 3-4 decades. the real fight seems to be between conservatives who want to continue this trend and moderate democrats who want to very passively resist it. and i just don't think it's really a big deal one way or the other who wins, cause both of those approaches aren't all that appealing to me. maybe i am being overly idealistic/my standards are too high... or maybe my moral character is flawed enough that it is more important to me that i can ignore the whole cluster**** and go about my day than it is that say, obamacare isn't overturned or some**** like that.
peter makes the point "but other people are affected besides yourself." and this is true. but let's take obamacare. i know people who have been both positively and negatively affected by it. for me, the young low-earning relatively healthy yet uninsured male, it was looking like the only difference obamacare was going to make for me was that it was going to force me to pay a few hundred dollars to a grand a year. this money will be used to either buy health insurance that i won't use, cause i still can't afford to regularly go to the doctor even with health insurance, and i don't have any serious health care issues that i would need to go to the hospital or anything like that. or else it would just be taken from me in the form of a tax penalty.
so really, although i would favor a single payer system that actually made it feasible for someone like me to get real health coverage, being 'pragmatic' and 'compromising' in this case leaves me with nothing but money flushed down the toilet. and yet i understand my money is being used to help other people like my mom afford health insurance. and i also know there are other people who run small businesses for whom obamacare is really presenting a huge obstacle and a nightmare towards their primary source of earning income. and so for them it's an even more serious problem. so i won't complain either way if it's not overturned or if it is. because honestly i could take it or leave it.
but above all i really dislike the way partisan politics sort of poison the population in this country and divide them into camps of red and blue drones. i have an uncle who has his fair share of character flaws, but in general is an overall funny and like-able guy except for the fact that he obsesses over partisan politics and makes everything into an us-vs-them argument.
and i see this **** on both sides. so it's not just a matter of not wanting to vote... it's the fact that if you are voting/taking a vested interest in which party succeeds over the other, you are expected to take a sort of active interest in partisan politics and keeping yourself informed on whatever the current debates are. and yet the current debates to me are so polarized, toxic, non-engaging and tribal in nature that i would really prefer to steer clear of them for the most part.
i have an interest in politics because i have an interest in civilization. i think it's interesting to ponder ways in which a civilization can organize itself and tackle problems. but inevitably, it seems, in this country anyway, whenever people try to take that and apply it to a political movement or campaign it just once again devolves into an us-vs-them scenario, where it's all about scoring points more than it is about obtaining actual results. and that's just a bit distasteful to me. so i rather not fund their careers and lend my ideological support to them since that is how they insist on behaving. i'll just let them do what they do and worry about myself.
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