Politics Now Officially Suck: A View From the Middle

I was fifteen years old when George H.W. Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton and subsequently left office.  As most fifteen year olds tend to do, I cared far more about sports and girls than I did about politics.  What I remember most about Bush was the ‘92 election, and that was only memorable because of that goofy Ross Perot (that’s literally how I remember him:  goofy.  And he very well may not have been.)

Other than that, because I was too young to truly have an opinion of his presidency, my opinion of the original President Bush was that he was not necessarily the most charismatic president of my lifetime but that he was the most selfless and dutiful president of my lifetime.  And I’ll be the first to admit that this opinion was probably fully formed in the years after he left office.  Overall, I had nothing but a positive opinion of him.  I honestly think Dana Carvey helped mold that opinion.  And it’s uber cool that the original Bush embraced how Dana Carvey portrayed him on SNL.

I’m not sure if it was in honor of his passing or a recently renewed interest in politics, but I took his death to read up a little on President Bush’s legacy and achievements while in office.  Most of what is written about him talks about his success in foreign affairs, especially with that of warming the international climate in the aftermath of the Cold War with the former USSR.

He was instrumental in forming or maintaining good working relationships not only with the Soviet Union but also with Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.  That’s two major foreign events that happened during his time in office. It is impossible to suggest what those relationships meant to our country in the years after that.  What if they had turned into hostile relationships rather than the mostly friendly relationships he helped engineer?  What would our country – or the world, for that matter – look like now had he created irreparable tensions nearly thirty years ago?

A couple of things stood out to me when I was reading about George H.W. Bush’s legacy, and I couldn’t help but relate them to our current political climate.  First, Bush governed at a time when the economy was battling a recession and the budget was nearly impossible to balance.  Domestically, he had a tough climate to overcome.  But if you fast forward a few years, Clinton was blessed with a booming economy during part of his presidency.  So who takes credit for that?

I ask that because right now everybody wants to give Trump credit for the good economy, but there is the argument that it is and always will be cyclical and there is another argument (sometimes combined with the last one) that says the booming economy is because of things Obama started when he was in office (it was already getting better during Obama’s last four years.)  And if you keep going back, was Bush Jr. to blame for the recession that happened on his watch?  Or should we blame Clinton?  Wait, I know.  It’s always the Republicans fault and never the Democrats, right?  Or is it the other way around?

So who’s right?  I say everybody.  You can literally say Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Congress, Senate, the Supreme Court, and the very nature of economy (along with the state and local governments, foreign economies, technology advancements, etc.) are the causes of recessions and growths.  You take even one of them out, and suddenly you’re wrong.  And it works that way for every administration.  But everybody wants to take credit when it’s good and place blame when it’s bad.  It’s getting very predictable and bland.

The second thing that stood out to me about “Bush 41” was that very few people seemed to dislike him.  He had his haters like all presidents do, but he wasn’t widely hated. He was just a good president that didn’t do a whole lot good and didn’t do a whole lot bad domestically and was a wonderful face and voice for our country in foreign affairs.

The last thing I noticed was that he actually angered some conservatives during his time as president.  I was actually pretty shocked when I read that.  He went against his word and raised taxes (I don’t know exactly where or on what population; it doesn’t matter now.)  This apparently angered them badly enough that almost twenty percent of the final popular vote in 1992 went to Ross Perot.  Can you even imagine that happening right now?  Can you imagine Trump doing ANYTHING that would make his supporters vote for a goofy calculator dude that makes promises that are pretty impossible to keep?

I say all of that about President Bush because it has recently become quite apparent that I absolutely love reading about politics.  It has also become apparent that I must force myself to stop.  I don’t know that I will ever fully understand my own mind, but I know that reading about politics the past few weeks and months has helped cause my mood and depression to fluctuate pretty severely, and I’m better off getting away from it entirely, even if it means I never again vote or watch the news.  I need to be a grown man that lives on the grid and inattentively off the political grid at the same time.  I say that because most of us aren’t meant to handle the amount of hatred and divisiveness that currently exists in this country.  It is simply not good for our physical, mental, and emotional health.

When I was nineteen years old, and I loved politics so much that I got a summer internship working for a Congressman in Washington DC, there was divisiveness, but there was very little hatred.  You could actually have a cordial debate with people across the aisle.  No more.  The people across the aisle hate you and everything you stand for immediately upon learning what party you belong to.

President George H.W. Bush was a GOOD man.  Yeah, he was just a one term President with very few domestic wins other than maybe the Americans with Disabilities Act, but he was a good man to serve those four years of global unrest and a good man in the years after his term ended.  He was nothing more than a leader of people, and he did EVERYTHING with their best interest at heart.  Not one group, not one side, not the people who shoved money in his pockets, not the people who could advance his agenda.  He seemed to love and respect the position he was given because he loved the American people.  And judging by his foreign affairs victories, he loved people outside our borders, too.  Almost like we’re all human beings with the same needs, wants, and desires.

And in twenty-five short years, we have a political climate that resembles a marriage between The Purge and Mean Girls.

Social media and news media are filled with people who I am growing to hate, and I have never had a place for much hatred in my life.  It is at times startling, at times sickening, and sometimes even a little sobering to see the hatred being volleyed about in social media and news media.  

I am a registered independent, and if I continue voting, I always will be.  I do not want to be associated with the Republican party or the party my grandfather so loved.  You know, that party that gets those fun nicknames like “Libs” or “Lib-tards” or “socialists” or just “Dems.”  Because name-calling isn’t just a random act for bullies and insecure people anymore; it’s necessary to keep up with the other assholes of the country.  And yes, in full disclosure, I spent the first few years of my voting life a Democrat and I still lean left a little.  I’m allowed.  It’s my right.  It doesn’t make me a bad person.  Get on a pro-Trump Facebook post, however, and people like me murder unborn children for fun, want everybody to be on welfare, and forcibly try to turn people gay.  

And I’m mostly in the MIDDLE.  Imagine what those people think of the extreme “leftists.”

I will not take this platform to bash our president.  I would hope for a leader that would not lead by such childish measures as bullying, intimidation, and crass, but he has a very passionate following, and I will not disagree with all that he wants done in this country.  I even agree with some of it.  The main reason not to bash the president, however, is that it is wasted words.  I don’t really need Democrats to fawn over words they can hear on television every day and I already know Trump’s staunchest supporters aren’t capable of handling constructive criticism, so what’s the point, you know?

My views from the middle seem to me to be a a neat little rational way of viewing the topics on the political landscape with a completely open and untainted mind.  I view it as Republicans are not correct just because they are Republicans and I am a puppet who MUST agree with them.  Likewise, I do not agree with Democrats simply because I am a puppet who MUST agree with them for the well-being of the party.

That’s dangerous thinking.  It’s irresponsible.  If we let one man decide our thoughts for us, we are not thinking, and the end result of that is just a worse version of today.  I am not at all saying that you should not agree with everything President Trump wants to do in this country; by God you are absolutely allowed to do that.  But I do know that blind allegiance to any one single human being is dangerous.

In being an independent, I get to think about all the pieces of the platforms individually and think, “My gut says this, but what’s the most likely way to see this through to a compromise?”  When I get to that place where I have incorporated ideas from both sides, it gives me a feeling of satisfaction. I have one of those, “This is what they should do for the good of the country” moments before falling back into reality and realizing we have a bunch of spoiled, partisan-to-the-death children who are the vocal “leaders” of our country, both in actual leadership positions and in media.

Sadly, you would think that these immature leaders would be enough, but the staunch followers of both parties are nasty, mean, vulgar, brash, intimidating, manipulative, conniving bullies.  That would almost be understandable if half of them weren’t so ignorant and blatantly unrealistic on the topics about which they bitch.  Most of them essentially say, “I am blue/red and I will stand with my party even if I must belittle and condemn my own family because I actually know very little about what I’m talking about and nastiness and blind allegiance – even when Constitutionally wrong – is my only weapon.”  And yes, I’ve been very observant the past few months. It’s BOTH parties.

I actually hate it for a stately president like President George H.W. Bush that he had to leave this Earth with this kind of political climate.  That’s kind of sad.

This is what the people in the middle see from that awkward place IN the middle.  We actually don’t have a place in politics right now, even though the middle probable takes up 20-30% of each side of the aisle, making it a pretty large chunk of people.  It’s the extreme 20% on each side that are the vocal ones, and they both think the other extreme 20% are delusional, and that’s a really fun game to see two groups of people argue when they BOTH think the other is delusional.  This argument they have with the other side, when they can’t realistically fathom that other people are allowed to have beliefs that differ from their own, makes them look pretty ignorant.  But when we middlers look at all of this from this nearly insurmountable place in the middle, it looks like it would just be so easy to fix.

Compromise and negotiation does not mean surrender, it means you’re leading.  Both parties act as though if they back down, the other party wins.  It’s as if the white flag has come out if the very mention of compromise or cordiality is considered.  But that’s what leaders of people do, especially ones who want the best for all the people they lead.  And I’m not just talking about the elected officials.  Media in this country, both social and pure journalism, is VERY powerful, and there doesn’t seem to be a true leader in the bunch.

We have a rash of sheer repulsiveness in these leaders right now.  We have people lying to grand juries and covering up crimes and mocking people who disagree with them and paying bribes to keep people quiet and deflecting blame for corrupt email usage and clueless men AND women making light of a very real victory parade for women who are refusing to not be taken advantage of by powerful men anymore.  We have both sides of the aisle with very real, very imaginable arguments why some of those leaders need to be in jail.  Our leaders, on BOTH sides, are crooks.  That’s not the country we should be.  I truly do not understand why we are defending them.

To this day, I am still shocked that we have sunk to a level that our ONLY choices for president in 2016 were a woman with more scandals than a Barnes and Noble and a man who mocked a disabled reporter’s handicap AT A RALLY and bragged to another grown man about grabbing women in the p**sy.  I’m sorry, but those two things say so, so much about him. What kind of elderly, married man says that to another grown man?  Think about that for a moment.  If you are a man, put yourself in those shoes.  If random women allowed you to “grab them in the p**sy,” to what other man in your life would you brag?  And how would you feel if you felt the need to brag about such things?  If you know the answer to those questions, please take a good long look at your morals.

And Hillary, my god. I wouldn’t trust her to claim the correct tax write off amount from a lunch at Waffle House.  I literally have not believed a single word out of her mouth since the Benghazi scandal, and I still don’t even understand all that she’s even accused of with that.  She’s just one of those people that wears guilt in her eyes and confirms it with her voice.  It’s still just shocking to me that they were our only choices.  It was like going to a fancy steakhouse and having to choose between three week old roadkill and arsenic tofu.

And yes, I proudly admit that I did NOT vote for president in 2016.  Doing so would have meant I supported one of them to win.  I did not.  I will support my country no matter who my president is, but there is nothing in any founding document that says I have to pledge allegiance to him (or her, if that is ever the case.)

But that’s our leaders.  We have some control over them.  We have the power to vote them out.  We also have the power to tune out social media and the news media, and that is a goal of mine in the near future.  I will no longer let these faceless, heartless, crude, uncouth, nasty, vile, ignorant idiots control my mood or my thoughts.  I admit I allowed it to.  That’s why I’m writing about it.  I need to get inside my own thoughts and dissect them to truly understand them.  And with this decision, I’m right.  I have to look away.  My time is not well spent with scum.

If that’s your game, though, have at it.  If you want to be one of those online badasses, you go right ahead.  Go get yourself a nifty little photo app and a vibrant imagination and let your hatred just ooze straight out of your ass.  Go do stuff like grabbing a four year old picture of a random bloody guy and force it into the current news cycle and then plaster it all over social media (because deception, manipulation, and outright lies are fair game, right?  That’s the “Christian” way of doing business, right?)  Then again, since Republican puppets are playing the copy-cat game and following Trump with his “fake news” accusations, why are they participating in it?  That’s hypocritical.  Let’s take a look at that Republican-made “fake news” that I referenced, shall we?  The top is what was on Facebook, the caption at the bottom is my commentary.

That was fun.  Let’s keep that going and look at some other stupid memes off the interwebs.  But let’s show some equality.  Because I want to show the stupidity, hatred, and divisiveness of both sides, let’s alternate blue and red (again, my commentary is at the bottom.  It’s my first and last political platform to be sarcastic about all of this stupidity, so I might as well enjoy it.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now, the best ones of the bunch.  These are real screen shots off of the comments of real Facebook posts.  I promise I would have snapped some screen shots if I had seen Democrats wanting to castrate Trump or shove a grenade up his ass, but I couldn’t find any.  Most of them just called him a liar and that he should be in jail, blah, blah.  These comments below, however, came from a post about Hillary Clinton.

Here we have people recommending the revival of that wonderful American institution known as KKK and a person recommending that Hillary commit suicide.  Our suicide rates are at a fifty year high, but that seems like a reasonable request.  And then there’s the guy that wants to “dround” Hillary in cyanide and/or stone her to death.  Just fabulous Americans on display here.  And no, I did not attempt to hide names.  If they put it on social media, I assume they don’t need anonymity.

 

 

Can I make a few political suggestions before I sign off?  I mean, I know I CAN.  It’s my blog.  The only way we advance as a society and ever have a chance to make it back to being the greatest country in the world (which we are not; far from it) is to find a way to do what is right for the majority of Americans with every decision we make.  When there is no majority, the only way to find a resolution is to find common ground.  That means nobody wins, and that’s exactly the way it needs to be.  This is NOT a war between parties even though it damn sure feels like it.  This much hatred is essentially a cold war within our borders.

Take any topic, find the box that contains ALL the ideas that both parties have ever had, and throw the damn box away.  Take immigration.  We are at war within our borders about immigration.  If we’re talking about that god forsaken caravan, is there a chance we are attacking the wrong people?  We have the strongest military in the world and we’ve always thought we policed the whole place, right?  If their home country is that damn dangerous, can’t we invade (or pressure them) and get it under control?  That may be a stupid idea, but it seems to me we don’t want them here, right?  So make it more hospitable for them at home.

How about the other part of immigration; those that are already here.  Most people probably agree that we don’t really want our tax dollars going to support the education of illegal immigrant children (and trust me, there is a LOT of them.)  So make them become legal before they can come back to school.  That would force the whole family to begin the legalization process.  Why not start there?  Don’t just “deport all the f**kers now,” start with a single aspect of it and get rid of part of the problems associated with them being here.  Slowly we can fix the damage.  Stuff like this does NOT happen overnight.  It literally could take years, maybe even decades.  The people that want to just deport everybody today are not realistic about this.

And if they’re getting government support financially, if they fail a drug test, they’re gone.  That’ll take care of a good number of them.  That may be a stupid idea, too, but I guarantee you that one would work for welfare.  Some states are already trying that.  If these people think drugs are more important than their welfare check, they need to feel comfortable living in a tent with their bong.

How about abortion?  There’s no middle ground?  Republicans call democrats murderers, but republicans don’t realize that we have that little thing called freedom of religion that allows for differing opinions on when life actually begins.  Hell, the bible isn’t even definitive about when life begins (but we can’t use the Bible for these laws anyway.)

We have to be realistic about this.  Not everyone is going to believe the same thing.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t make it super difficult to GET an abortion, now does it?  We can require counseling, we can require them to meet with adoption agencies or potential parents, we can even cap it at eighteen years old or rape victims because anybody older than eighteen ought to know what causes them or how to use birth control.  There are ways to find a middle ground.  But nobody’s trying that approach anymore.

Everybody likes to bitch about global warming.  Great.  It’s probably a ridiculous argument.  It appears to be as cyclical as the economy.  But how is it a bad idea to clean up as much as we can?  We can’t all agree that everything we do should be as energy efficient and clean as our technology allows it to be?  Seems like an easy place to start.

Gay marriage.  It’s really a pointless argument that we should not be having.  You literally CANNOT pass laws on the basis of the Christian bible.  That is IN the Constitution.  That is the only reasonable argument against this, and it is NOT allowed.  Stop trying to pass laws based on the Bible.  Those trying to do so – while also championing for gun rights – are ignoring the very document they use to promote their cause.  It’s hypocritical.  And there’s not really a middle ground with gay marriage.  You can’t halfway get married.  Just stop disobeying the Constitution.  That’s all I ask.

I will give you a new argument that I absolutely HATE, though, and I truly don’t understand why this is even a thing.  This new proposal for FREE college education for everybody?  Are you f**king kidding me?  I will move to another country before I support that.  We are already taking away valedictorian and salutatorian and every child that so much as mentions a sport gets a trophy the size of his head.  Hell, they probably let them spell shit wrong in third grade spelling bees just so everybody can win.  Oh, and I teach high school.  We are giving out D’s like they are toothpicks just to push kids through, regardless of whether or not they are illiterate.

Hell no.  Make these children WORK for something.  College is NOT for everybody, nor will it ever be.  It is a privilege and scholarships should ALWAYS go to those kids that work their asses off.  That’s life.  I will NEVER support free college, and I’ve done my damnedest to see both sides.  But this catering to kids and giving them life on a silver platter is one of the worst ideas our country has ever had.  It WILL eventually push me out of teaching.  And I’m a damn good teacher that NEVER bitches about the money.  I did it because I wanted to do something important.  But with every free gift we give kids without them earning it, my importance and credibility in the classroom is becoming nonexistent.

To wrap this thing up, I believe there is a middle ground for almost EVERY argument, and I’m no fool to think it’s going to happen in every instance.  I AM foolish enough to think we need to think of the serenity of a president like George H.W. Bush and be nicer to our fellow Americans.  Negotiation, compromise, maturity, and cordiality are NOT characteristics of surrender.  They show a man, woman, or political party who wants what’s best for their country, even if it’s not necessarily what’s best for themselves.  Or their religion, for that matter.