Bored Druid Thread: The Next GenerationFollow

The thing with American politics is that we're largely still arguing the same exact **** we were arguing about back in 1789 when we ratified our constitution. And because of that, our entire political system has essentially been worked around it.

The thing to remember is that the US was a nation of immigrants and one of the first to come into its own during the Age of Enlightenment. But where later revolutions were motivated and influenced by a great deal more thought and debate to the political philosophy (most notably Marx), we came into it relatively early in that process.

So because of that, the principles we were founded on have realistically left a severe issue with regards to ideas surrounding power of the people and power of the government. Essentially, we were founded as a small government system on a political philosophy that calls for a severe unequal distribution of power... but we were a republic (sort of - oligarchy, technically).

So essentially the entirety of our political debate since then has entailed figuring out how we determine the role of government, power of the people, and definitions of equality under that political philosophy. And our modern parties are essentially direct descendants of those original groups, with some significant exceptions.

That basic conflict has changed with the times, with industrialization, the rise of unionization, civil rights, etc. And the Democratic Party and the Republican Party essentially swapped core ideologies in the mid-20th Century due entirely to a significant change in the stance on social issues in the party, but that's essentially how it has gone down.

It's basically ALWAYS been defined by two characteristics: position on race, position on the power of the worker vs. the power of the industrialist.

Gender has been a hot-button issue at times, and topics related to abortion, marriage, rape, and divorce waxing and waning over the past two centuries.

And that's American politics in a nutshell.

Right now, it's social and economic liberals to the left, social and economic conservatives to the right. At other points, the social and conservative positions have been mismatched (Democratic-Republicans were the ones who owned the most Slaves, originally, but they LOVED them some small government heavy on state power).



The difference between American and world education systems is that other places learn about the world. We learn so little about everything from world history to geography.

Which is a shame, because the vast majority of Americans have no reason to care about where North Dakota is, but a hell of a lot of reason to know the basic geography of Eastern Asia.

That's a depressingly concise summary.

As long as the political philosophies of our parties are founded on fundamentally opposed ideas at the ground level, there's not much we can really do. The sheer extent to which they are in opposition is just absurd.

You look at most countries with binary party systems, and the parties are ultimately quite similar, in that they've accepted the fundamental baseline of their government as being something that is valuable and worthwhile.

In America, it tends to be about "NO PROTECTIONS FOR RACE" which forces the other party to counter with "ALL THE PROTECTIONS FOR RACE" and then we all just pray they meet somewhere in the middle and it's not a disorganized mess.

In other developed nations, it tends to be more like "Some protections for race!" and "Some MORE protections for race!" Which sets the baseline pretty high compared to us.

LIES!!!

The standard college freshman essay topic: How the two party system is detrimental to the political landscape of the United States, and variants of.

Seriously, I'm willing to bet the freshmen English professors see this line of **** at least twenty five times per semester.

I think I could point out a good bit, the coast north of New York is a *********** of mini states that should just merge into one blue state already, I mess up on the area around Lake Michigan a lot and I couldn't say which great empty midwest state is which but the coasts and the south I should get most if not all.


You arguably have 3 parties right now. It's just that two of them are sort of haphazardly stuck together because of the winner takes all system.

That doesn't work, they'd just all blend together into one big "middle" party. The party colour, of course, would be grey and occasionally there'd be an appendage or two that pretends to split off from the big grey party and shouts at it for a while so people can voice their dissatisfaction before said appendage fades away or melds back into the grey party.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2013 1:12pm by Aethien

Tea Party : Republicans as Suicide Bombers : Islam.

A destroys the image of B to the world at large.

Damn, this number bloat is worse than I thought. Just went into a heroic with a Warlock who was doing 1.3 million damage on his Chaos Bolt crits (auto-crits)... so... yeah... try maintaining aggro through that.

And the Disc Priest healer was doing more damage than the two other damage dealers (fresh 90's) combined. It's kind of ridiculous. I'm at 476 equipped ilvl (vendor epics), and I only do 50k DPS. I refuse to believe that 50 ilvls will increase my damage output by 300%, so I must be doing it wrong. It makes no sense.

In other news, I went out and got myself one of them electronic cigarettes. Also got me some nicotine juice from Sweden (because it's illegal to sell it here). I'm not sure what I think about it. The tobacco flavor tastes nothing like tobacco, so I might just go all-out weird flavors in the future, like coffee and bacon. That might be hilariously awesome combined.

The vaporization mimics smoke pretty well, but I miss the hot throat burn of a real cigarette. Probably because of the lack of tar and 3,999 other chemicals. This nicotine juice apparently only contains two E-numbers, both of which are harmless, as they break down into vinegar and other acids that are already present in the body. It's kinda nice being able to get the nicotine shot without having to worry about throat, mouth and lung cancer, though. And I get to puff away like I use to, unlike with nicotine chewing gum.

They're all just imitating me.

So other than avoiding U.S. collaborators, any ideas what you're looking to do?