My Diary

Latest Entry: Wednesday, April 16, 2025

THE PROBLEMS WITH POLITICAL PARTIES Years ago, I decided I was done belonging to a political party. It was the Republican Party, but no, I didn’t switch to the other side. I switched to NO side. Being a member of a party is an unwise thing to do. Sorry, but this is known (or at least it should be). Primarily this is because when you join, you “belong” to the party, the party does not belong to you. And in time, you belong to the party’s chosen leader. You work for them; not the other way around. People can say otherwise, but this is what invariably happens all the time. You eventually allow the leader to dictate what you think—what they believe is what you believe. I reiterate that this is for the right AND left, not just one side. And the further you get from the middle, the less of yourself and your own ideas remain intact and pure. Obviously, people will want to deny this. I believe it’s because of a few reasons. Firstly, it’s tough to be a member of a large group and continue to maintain your own opinions and ideas when it goes against the team. In a way that makes sense to keep things moving without conflict. If I were doing a play and every actor in the cast were allowed to decide on what direction to take for every scene, it would be chaos. Thus, we have directors. So we are accustomed to and accept allowing others to make decisions for us, but as I said, all those decisions get ingrained into our own beliefs. Slowly, we lose our independence and unique mindset and gradually accept the collective thought, which is ultimately guided by those politicians in charge—and often just one single person. (Hint: that’s bad!) Secondly, it’s a psychological defensive mechanism to want to avoid going against the grain as it weakens our own decision in joining that team. If you sign up, and later feel the people in charge are not making choices in line with what you believe, you admit to making a poor choice to be on board in the first place. It’s far easier to tell yourself that you must be in error in disagreeing with the ones controlling the game. It is just solidifying your initial stance or choice, entrenching yourself deeper to avoid the slings and arrows flying overhead. And I see this happen ALL. THE. TIME. As well, people suddenly feel a misguided obligation to prevent anyone else from disagreeing with their party’s leader, probably going back to the feelings of being mistaken when others do not agree. I knew someone that lost his s*** because I dared to suggest tariffs were not being carried out properly. I mean this guy went berserk (though he was fairly unstable to begin with). When that kind of stuff happens, you know people have been conditioned into losing their identity and common sense. Their lives now belong to the party. All self thought is gone. Finally, it simply perpetuates a problematic system. While two parties are infinitely better than one—I mean one party is simply a dictatorship as seen in North Korea, Russia, and China. Some of those countries try to lightly hide it with faux elections, but most see through the 99.99% dictator victories. Although I think North Korea goes with 100% now, which could even be true as most would not be foolish enough to write anything else down and risk public execution. (And thanks to cowardly inaction of the past four administrations, NK now has nukes, so we are now powerless to intervene and save the starving populations—but I digress). With two parties, we get either a hard left platform, or a hard right platform. There is no compromise on things. And with far too many accepting that no other party can or should be allowed to compete, we just cannot ever get away from this limited institution. I mean every time a person even mentions voting independent or not for one of the two big ones, he or she is instantly bombarded with “Well, then that’s a vote for (insert opposing party)!!!” And to me, that is a huge problem in and of itself. Frankly, I do not care. I’d rather at least have one minuscule vote going towards an ideal that can improve our country instead of more of the same nonsense. You see, the thing is, you CAN STILL vote Republican or Democrat or Libertarian, or whatever suits your fancy. You’re either voting for someone you think is going to improve America, or perhaps someone who will do the least damage, OR none of the above, and you vote for someone you believe may not win, but is simply the best person for the job. And you get to keep your original beliefs at the same time. No compromising principles. With political parties, they are going to have agendas that do NOT fully align with your beliefs I mean, that’s how it should be! If you are finding your party matches your beliefs completely, then what I’ve mentioned above has already happened: you altered your belief system to ensure you fit entirely into the party’s system. What were the chances that the party just simply has all the same stances you first desired? Zero percent. Sorry, but the truth its that it’s zero. You MUST maintain your own opinions and ideas on how things should be run, what laws should be in place. It just cannot be done when inside a party with all the opposing forces against you. Your mindset will be changed. Okay, some would call it brainwashed, or indoctrinated, or programmed, though that’s a little strong. It’s just a slow process that we all have to protect ourselves—a defensive mechanism which is all about survival. We strive to avoid or reduce conflict. I won’t explicate all my platform opinions here. No point in that, but I will say I’m not entirely against every single decision of the current president. Some things I do agree with. Some things I think are good choices and make sense for our country. BUT as I’m not a registered Republican, I’m free to say, “Uh, no! That issue is not being handled correctly,” or “No! You’re entirely mistaken in regard to that!” I’m not tied down to toeing the party line and being restricted into never disagreeing with choices the president or other White House members make. This is true for even State level things. In California, I suppose I disagreed a LOT with the governor’s decisions, but not all of them. I wasn’t Democrat then (or now), but completely free to say or post my own thoughts and ideas. Same goes for city level issues. Seattle does do some things right. Other things…eh, not so much. WE ALL NEED THIS FREEDOM! As a bonus, not being in a party also eliminates that childlike retort that always gets fed when you disagree with a choice. If I disagreed with something Biden did, I would hear, “Oh yeah! Well, Trump did THIS when he was president.” I would say, “Yeah, well, I am not a fan of Trump either.” Or if I said, “Trump isn’t making a good decision here,” I’d get, “Well, BIDEN did that!” Okay, great. I don’t care for him as well. Honestly, I think BOTH made a lot of poor choices, ESPECIALLY on foreign policy. Though to be honest, domestically, my main focus is the economy and how it’s handled. For foreign policy, my preference is being strong against foreign dictators, which, and I got to be honest, NO U.S. PRESIDENT has wielded a big stick in the last 16 years, which has led to many, many problems for us now. Anyway, it’s just food for thought. I don’t anticipate everyone suddenly burning their political identity cards anytime soon. The same boxed in two-party system will continue until who knows how long, with trade-offs in power mainly happening if one leader tanks the economy too close to elections (Americans have very short political memories), or a party gets someone who mesmerizes and bamboozles people en masse. (And it’s not just the current guy—this has happened several times before). But if you decide to continue being inside of a party, do remember that the CANDIDATE works for you! It’s not the other way around. You are the BOSS! FORCE them to do your bidding. Don’t abandon your beliefs and values and cave to their whims and demands. Because that isn’t what our forefathers intended. Cheers!