StagNATION: A Decade of Backward Steps in U.S. Politics

Current Tunes: Doomriders – Crooked Path

Looking around the web for the past few days, lots of news outlets are putting up cute little features about the past decade in politics, and it seems like most of them have a quite negative view of the past ten years. Rightly so, I’d say.

Ever since 2000 we’ve been given barely any reason at all to believe in our leaders. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m only talking about Dubya here either. It’s everyone. There’s been what seems like a literal avalanche of contemptible behavior in the American political landscape. There was the Valarie Plame incident, the failure of John Kerry, the impotency of the Democratic Congress (under Bush AND Obama), the heinousness of Jack Abramoff, the torture of Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo, illegal wiretapping. It’s been a played-out joke for a while now, but to say that it all makes me wish for the days of Bill Clinton isn’t so much of a joke anymore. And I don’t like Clinton at all.

Perhaps the most disheartening thing about all of this is it’s not like this is just me being Sad Sally about our system. Everyone is pissed off. The whole country knows its getting screwed over left and right and this feeling didn’t just start yesterday or anything. It’s been building since midway through the decade. A lot of people thought the answer for all the negativity and corruption of Washington was Barack Obama, and I hate to break it to you, but he’s not the answer at all.

In my view, there are a few very specific causes of the majority of problems with the operation of our government. The foremost of them being the Democratic and Republican political parties. These two parties are meant to serve as opposing sides of a system that hinges on a very tight balance. Instead of acting as a liaison between their candidates and the people who they will represent, they are in actuality and facilitator between candidates and pure power. That’s what the political parties truly care about. They don’t care about classes, or demographics, or regions. They care about running the show, those other things are just keys to their end goal.

Another main key for the parties to keeping control is the second major cause of our government’s ineptitude: corporate sponsorship and lobbying. Every politician, every single one (except maybe independent/socialist senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont) has taken money from large corporations and they depend on them to fund their campaigns. They listen to those companies more than they listen to actual people.

Electing Obama didn’t address either of these issues at all. Obama took money from major corporations and he’s indebted to the Democratic Party, obviously. So the system marches on, free to continue exploiting their unbelievable power and influence to benefit only themselves. Significant progress will happen when the parties reform (fat chance, I say) or a new 3rd party establishes itself as meaningful and influential enough to back an alternative campaign and set of policies. A noteworthy 3rd party I think could happen, if people would wake up and stop blindly following the Republicans and Democrat parties all the way off the cliff.

It’s been a very uncomfortable ten years of politics for me. As the years went on and things became more and more corrupt, the more disgusted and apathetic I became about it. A decade ago, I had a fierce, decisive viewpoint on any topic but was still willing to listen to opposing sides. Now I just don’t care; or I do care but I find it hard to do anything about it.