And This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things...

This post goes along well with the position paper we just wrote, and I'm reaching back in time to bring Craig R. Smith into the mix as well. 

I hate politics as much as the next person might. But my dislike of politics should not be misinterpreted for me not caring about them. Oh, I care. I care about the state our country is in and I definitely care about all the messes my generation will have to clean up later. What I hate is the whining and schoolyard fights politicians get into, which gets nothing accomplished. 

Just-- just no. No. 

I myself, am a moderate; I don't swing left or right, I obey gravity and fall right down the middle. Some things get me more fired up than others, but by the end of the day, I'm not in a screaming match with someone with opposing views and 9 nights out of 10, I go to bed peacefully. That tenth one that's not peaceful is probably because of a test or eight-page paper. 

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I also just need to take a moment to add this in here, and I'm not going to count this little rant as part of the post word-count. But I need to add this to combat any claim that saying I'm a moderate is a political cop-out: 

It's not. As a moderate, I'm not tuned-out from what's going on in the world; I see both sides of the issues at hand. I think the main parties in the U.S.A are overly ideological and need to learn to get along with one another. 

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Now, to combat my ever-growing frustration and annoyance with politics, I usually relieve stress by analyzing political ads I see on TV or YouTube and flyers I get in the mail. I pick out everything they're doing wrong, and all the little quirks they include to sway the masses their way. But that, my friends, is not what this blog post is about. Well... actually, it sort of is. But it's mainly about Craig Smith's "Campaign Reform as Censorship", so we'll talk about that first.

To be honest, reading it actually made me angry. But that's mostly because my default reaction to political readings is a stereotypical teenager groan and eye-roll. I'm not one to donate money to political parties, and I don't think I ever really will be. I don't have any memories of my parents actively donating money to political causes, except perhaps once when my brother worked on the campaign of David Schweikert (Arizona's House Representative). Other than that, I haven't been paying attention. 

But in that reading, there was one thing that spun me into a dimension of disbelief and disgruntlement I don't believe I've ever been in before in my life. It was this:

"The distribution of federal funds favored the two-party systems, thereby quashing the voices of third party candidates. Full matching funds were provided ONLY to those parties that scored 25% of the vote or more in the previous presidential election. Worse yet, the law funded the two parties' primary candidates, conventions, and election campaigns, while marginalizing third parties and their candidates."

[If you listen really closely you can hear me screaming]

This is just one of the things we've covered in the political pool that has driven me up the wall. There was also Stephen Colbert's "Super PAC" video (which I've watched about thirty times, purely for the humor), which drove me back down said wall. Both of these things just left me in appalled awe at how candidates acquire so much money, but instead of using it towards something like, I don't know, fixing the potholes in town, the first thought they have is:

"......I'm gonna buy a cruise ship."

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of politicians out there who are willing to use their funds to help the community, but it's painfully rare. And it's because of these attempts at reformation--which don't really fix anything--and whatnot that it's so uncommon. And I think this shows in the flyers and ads I see and receive. I very rarely receive flyers from third-party candidates, and 90% of what comes to my house is from one of the two main parties. Even in the position paper we just wrote, there were zero ads from candidates outside of the two main parties to choose from, though that could be because they just weren't included in favor of better-known names.