Joke e-mail
I'm fairly staunchly democrat, and I have a few friends who are pretty solidly republicans, at least they pretend to be, and who seem to think it's funny to send me these joke e-mails that put down the democrats. Okay, most of them are pretty funny, but the point is that they're not based on factual information. That's the main difference that I see between the republicans and the democrats, although I worry that the some democrats may lower themselves to the level of republicans and thus prove me wrong.
Anyway, the main difference is that the republicans like to make jokes at the expense of their opponents. Think back to the 4th grade for a second. You're with a group of kids, and they start making fun of another group of kids. You don't want to be made fun of, so you make a mental note not to hang out with the kids who are being made fun of. This is another basic way in which we have evolved to think, and the republicans try to take advantage of this. They know that there's no rational reason why any intelligent, middle class, human being would vote in someone who would take their money away from them, so they try to turn attention away from that and use ridicule as a way to dupe people into voting for them.
That's the way I see it anyway.
LeRoy.
posted by LeRoy at 10:43 PM
4 Comments:
I find it interesting that I'm a republican living in a liberal state and that I'm a computer engineer. The reason I find that interesting is because I'm Puerto Rican (hispanic or latin, pick which ever one you think is politically correct). By most accounts I should be a democrat, living in New York and on welfare (uneducated).
When I came to this country I lived in New York. I didn't speak a lick of english. They did not have bi-lingual education and by year's end, I was speaking english.
My parents did not put me through college. I joined the U.S. Army (I was stationed in Oklahoma) and earned enough money to put myself through college (in California).
Sometimes I wonder if I'm blind because I just don't see the discrimination a few minorities rave about. My experience is that if you work hard and assimilate, you'll do fine. You go against the grain, you get splinters. Mainly because people just can't relate and don't understand.
I think that liberals mean well but sometimes they do more harm than good. Bi-lingual education keeps hispanics (or latinos) at a level where they are less able to compete in this country.
Welfare (if given to an individual indefinately) robs the recepients of any incentives they may have of becoming valuable members of society. I know. My aunt has been on welfare for years.
People may see republicans as bullies but I know about bullies too. I was always the smallest in my class and got picked on a lot. A bullie is some one who gives you a kick in the ass simply because he can (this is not constructive). A republican gives you the much needed, sometimes over due, kick in the ass to get your ass in gear (this is constructive). I don't know of any 4th grader that is sophisticated enough to know when you need a kick in the ass and who has the empathy to do it.
BTW, political jokes usually can be modified so that it's the republican who are the butt of the joke. I send out jokes because I think they are funny, not because I'm mean spirited. Jokes do not have to be based on factual information. Otherwise we wouldn't have stereotypical jokes. Stereotypes are not facts, they are a gross over simplification. Like when I stereotype liberals as being rabid over the prospecs of having George in the white house for another 4 years.
-j
Some people think that we should raise taxes in order to pay for more public programs, but, if we were to apply Milton Friedman's Parable, we would realize that when government spends tax payer's money on public programs, they are not very concerned about how much is spent, nor how it is spent. So the money ends up getting wasted, mismanaged and often finds its way into the hands of people that were not intentded to receive it. Here's the whole parable:
If you spend your own money on yourself, you are very concerned about how much is spent and how it is spent.
If you spend your own money on someone else, you are still very much concerned about how much is spent, but somewhat less concerned about how it is spent.
If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you are not too concerned about how much is spent, but you are very concerned about how it is spent.
However, if you spend someone else's money on someone else, you are not very concerned about how much is spent, or how it is spent.
I couldn't agree with you more Joe. I personally wouldn't be too disappointed if we completely got rid of welfare. However, there are other issues that I think are more important than that, and that's why I'm a democrat.
First, I think that the republican party has been bought by large corporations. Not all of them obviously. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger might still be clean, I think John McCain was pretty clean until fairly recently, but a lot of large corporations put a lot of money into the republican party and I know they're not doing it for nothing.
One problem with the two party system, is that you have these two parties who have a lot of influence in deciding who we're going to vote for. Who is the head of these parties? What is their structure and who decides who is in charge of these parties? Maybe this is common knowledge and I'm just stupid, but I don't see a lot of people talking about this. How long does a person stay in charge of a political party? We have a rule that a president can serve at most two terms, 8 years, but that doesn't apply to the policital parties. Somebody is in charge of the political parties, and we don't vote for them, and they have no term limits.
Thomas Jefferson was worried that if any one person stayed in power too long, they would become entrenched and it would be too difficult to remove him. That is why he wanted a "revolution" every four years, and that is why we have our elections every four years. However, if it's really the political parties who are in power (I don't think it is yet, but I think we're headed that direction), then we're not really voting in a new power every four years, we're just ping-ponging back and forth between the two existing parties.
I'm a democrat because I think the republican party is leading us in this direction. Certainly the democratic party has its backers as well, but the general impression that I've gotten over the years is that the republican party is more controlled by it's backers than the democratic party is by it's. Also, I think the backers of the democratic party are more in line with my interests than are the republican backers, namely protecting the environment and reducing the gap between the rich and the poor.
What I think might be a good idea is to have runoff elections. One problem we have right now is that no one wants to waste their vote on any of the minor parties. This makes it very hard for the minor parties to gain votes, which makes it hard for us to judge whether or not a minor party could potentially win an election and then not waste our vote. It's kind of a catch-22. But, if we had runoffs, then we could vote for the party we really liked in the first election, then have a runoff election consisting of maybe like the top half, or top five, or something like that.
Anyway, I can't prove any of the wild allegations that I threw around above. I'm just a guy with a family and a 50 hour a week job that doesn't allow me much time left over to think about politics. In the limited amount of time I have to think about this stuff, this is just the best I can come up with. You could argue, then, that maybe I should just keep my trap shut and listen to all the political commentators who obviously know more about this stuff than I do. The problem is, I don't really trust them. :(
By the way, I forgot to respond to your second comment. I hadn't heard of Milton Friedman before, but he makes a lot of sense.
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