Sunday, November 10, 2013

Adult tantrums

There's something happening in the US that reminds me of an aspect of politics that I never quite understood.

When a party is in power, they are bound to make changes. These changes are not likely to sit well with the other parties. Differences in ideology will do that. The thing I never understood is the rationale behind hijacking the government in one form or another to try and stop the changes even though the party (or President) is still in power. My logical brain suggests that no matter how much a ruling party changes things, people can always vote for change in the next election. No matter how unrecognizable a party makes a country, you can always change things again if you vote in a different party in the next election.

This is why I never understood why people will say things like "Oh, I will never vote for that party even though they might have some good ideas, because I'm afraid of what they might do while they're in power." I mean seriously, what's the worst that could happen? You get 4 years of changes you don't like and then you elect someone else. It's what gave me the freedom at various points in my life to vote for parties other than the one I'm usually aligned with. Because sometimes the other party has some good ideas worth taking a chance on while my (natural) party seems stuck in the mire.

I'm sick and tired of the "I can only ever vote for this one party" mentality "Because remember what the other guys did 40 years ago?", or "Only our party knows what's right for this country." What utter effing hogwash. My solution is a system similar to Germany's proportional representation. This forces parties to compromise and entertain other ideas while making every vote count, not just the ones that won the plurality. Parliaments become truly representative of the people.

Food for thought.

1 comment:

Retro Blog said...

Being basically apolitical, I have been puzzled by the shutdown, what was the point, the party platform has become "ANYthing to shut down Obama". Dumbness.