John McCain and the Radicalization of the American Politics
A look at the United States Political System does not bode well for optimism. We have one of the most ineffective deadlocked Congresses in the history of the country. Doing the opposite of whatever the President wants has become a legitimate political platform. The economy does not actually appear to be in recovery at all. The real reason the unemployment rate has dropped is because countless people have given up looking for jobs. The housing Market is not looking promising either with an entire generation set back at least 5 years or more due to crushing debt that they had no choice but to take on.
One can argue the seeds were planted long ago by this crisis. Ronald Reagan’s economic policies certainly have not helped things, but that’s to be expected when your entire administration is such criminals that they are still being tried for crimes to this day.
It could be argued that these problems exist due to factors even farther back. When one looks at the actions of Henry Clay and John Calhoun, it appears that this country was created to fail from the get go.
But that is not what was the blow that has lead to the current problem. After a long and quite enlightening conversation with my father, I have seen another angle to this problem. One that I may have had a very indirect hand in since I actually was able to vote in 2008.
I speak of John McCain and a series of what in hindsight appears to be very poor decisions in rapid succession.
Ever since 9/11 I have been quite cynical of politics. So when candidate Barack Obama started stirring the liberal base into a frenzy, I did not actually believe him. Instead, I did notice a moderate named John McCain who spoke about real solutions that could be made in a world that was very very resistant to change.
Unfortunately, the GOP did not want his more moderate platform and with stiff opposition to what he believed along with the more racist wing of the party in complete and utter opposition to Obama, forced him to make a tough choice that I believe created the downward spiral and decent into madness that our country has fallen into.
Instead of sticking to his guns, McCain gave in. He embraced the more radicalized beliefs of the Republican Party in hopes that it would give him the Presidency. To try and defeat Barack Obama who was certainly helped by the chance at being the first Black President, McCain made another choice which in hindsight was highly destructive. He chose Sarah Palin as his Vice President.
At that point, my choice became quite easy. After a year in college, I had already become familiar with the extremist form of Feminism that I like to call Neo Feminism. Most people see them as the men hating variation of Feminism. And since these individuals are not known for sanity, just like Sarah Palin herself is far from a paragon of this idea, I had a legitimate fear at the time that should MCain become president, his life would have been a ticking time bomb until assassins did him in, allowing this lunatic of a woman the chance to be our president.
For the sake of this country, I could not allow that to happen. Instead of voting for a candidate that had beliefs I could stand behind, I merely voted for Barack Obama because no matter what he did, at least he would prevent Sarah Palin from being in the oval office.
This idea of the lesser of two evils has become the message of the day. Both parties have become increasingly more extreme leaving moderates which make up a majority of Americans with no one who represents what they believe. As they feel left out, they no longer vote, leaving only the extremists with any power.
And while I understand that our political system is just a game to distract us while the people at the top continue to make use of Ronald Reagan’s Trickle Up policy, the fact that the puppet masters of the world know they can use increasingly more insane candidates does not bode well for this country.
In a world of extremism, only radicalization wins, ensuring that we will not have peace in our time.