jenroses:

orwellsunderpants
commented on beachdeath’s post “me sitting here two weeks before the midterm elections watching my…”

There may have been times when there wasn’t much to distinguish Dems and the GOP, but this sure as hell ain’t one of ‘em.Vote, y’all!

There have been stark differences between the two parties forever, more and more as time goes by. I’ve been watching politics since 1980, when my little 7 year old self watched Reagan take credit for getting the hostages free and sailed to victory. We found out later that there were Republican shenanigans to delay the release so Carter couldn’t take credit for  it, though I believe they came home on inauguration day. It’s been a while.

Growing up a teenager in rural Oregon, I watched my peers take conservatism to absurd degrees. We’d talk about welfare, and I’d ask about children who got welfare, and they’d say, “They should all get jobs.”
“Even if they’re like five?”
Yeah, they went there, and that was ehhhh 1988 or 1989. They were the same kids who were in religious youth groups and sanctimonious as hell, but come the weekend they were fucking and drinking and smoking and driving too fast because they could get away with it.

Once, I confronted the son of the local Southern Baptist Minister, and he said, “Hey, if you’re right, nothing bad will happen to me and if I’m right, you’ll burn in hell.”

The idea that Jesus forgives everything if you repent left a lot of kids fucking off to the nth degree on the grounds that if they thought they were dying they’d beg forgiveness. My position was that I wanted to live in a world that was kind and not like that, so I would spend my life being as decent as I could and if that wasn’t good enough for whoever was in charge (if anyone) then oh well, not a game I wanted to play.

In my adult life, there has NEVER been a time, not in the past 28 years, that there wasn’t a clear difference between the democrats and the republicans. And the Republicans literally ALWAYS make things harder for poor people, put the country further in debt, and pull bullshit shenanigans with foreign countries in ways that hurt the US in the long term. The Democrats aren’t perfect in those regards, but they do less damage even when they’re fucking up, than the Republicans do when they’re following their platform. 

I’d love it if we had a meaningful multi-party system. Philosophically I’m probably more socialist or Green party. But right now, we can’t fuck around with “voting for the perfect candidate in the party that fits the closest” when there is a large and organized wolf who beat the door down already and is systematically propelling us towards fascism. 

They literally want to watch it all burn, and take the cream for themselves. There is no other explanation for the level of malfeasance and grotesque disregard for civil behavior. It’s like they think the world is ending so they might as well go out rich. Whereas most of the Democrats I vote for would like to stop the world from ending and make things better for people. There’s corruption everywhere, but the democratic party as a whole has NOTHING on the entire Republican mindset. They run on a platform of “fuck anyone who isn’t just like you” and I will do anything in my power to make that not happen.