Politics for Dilettantes
Kawaii -- Wednesday, October 08, 2003 -- 10:08:43 PMApathetic? Uninformed? Don't even vote? Have your bread and want your circus?
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I don't intended at all to be a safe place for the those of liberal tendencies and this isn't moderated, no one is going to be yanking any posts to protect sensitivities.
I never found Clinton or Bush to be particularly likeable or trustworthy. I don't think they are evil, but I don't sense the magic of their charisma.
edit: heh, Brigit. Me too.
I do see an effect, but I want it to be shrewd political prowess. Charisma makes it seem too much like they just got lucky.
edit: what good would it be to disguise yourself if everyone can tell who you are? Maybe he is Gore.
I took the political party quiz that's on the libertarian site, and came out 45% Dem, 45% Green. The other quiz pegged me as fiscally moderate and socially liberal. Knock me over with a feather; I thought I was moderate. I've voted for a few Republicans. I'm the most conservative person in my social group, except the mother of the Special Forces soldier. I guess I'm what passes for moderate in the SF Bay Area.
I try to read the propositions, but they confuse me by obscuring the interests, so I vote no.
I don't trust Bush instinctively, and I don't see the charisma. I'm a sucker for a good speaker; that's how Clinton sucked me in.
As of 1:30 Tuesday morning, I was waffling on who to vote for to replace Gray Davis.
I think Reagan was the original Teflon President, but Clinton took it to new heights.
Me neither, Catgirl.
I was thinking the same thing.
I am uninformed about politics because whenever I think I want to know about an issue, I feel like the only information I can access is slanted one way or another to such an extreme that I never get the sense that I have any fucking clue what really happened (or is happening). It makes me crazy, so I bury my head in the sand.
I didn't really start reading about politics until the 2000 election, the first one I could vote in. I would love to be reasonably well informed on most issues but eventually my head starts spinning. The one issue I am passionate about is terrorism/war in iraq/etc. I lurk in the politics threads hoping to learn more.
Great thread. I'm in. Can we add uninformed to the list? I have a lot of opinions about how things should be, but I can't be bothered to wade through all of the yammering on either side to feel like I'm informed enough to participate in any of the politics threads.
The Bush/Clinton comparison is interesting. Clinton was such a shameless opportunist and horndog, but he was smart and he was an effective politician. If Bush is as opportunistic he's cagier about it, and he's not smart and not a horndog that we know of. He seems like a nice guy, but I haven't seen any evidence that he's a particularly effective president. He seems in over his head.
His handling of Iraq seems typical: he had the right idea, but he could't persuade the Europeans to sign on to the deal. So he made a pretty risky decision: to go in without the UN, and now he's having to go beg for help. He looks like a dork. It would have made more sense to me to wait a bit or provide better evidence to the Euros before going in, or to just handle the aftermath (occupationa and reconstruction) alone without requesting assistance after the fact.