Friday, January 27, 2006

Politics, or 5 Easy Steps To Save America

This is a political post, or, well, it's my version of a political post, which means it's me telling the world in somewhat strident tones exactly what America needs to do to fix things. Now, this is not one of my Evil Overlord posts, wherein I explain exactly how to fix the entire world by immediately making me Supreme Overbeing With Ultra Powers. This is a levelheaded, rational, realistic approach to American politics. That also uses a lot of long words, to prove that it's serious and all, you know.

1. Get rid of the two party system and implement parliamentary representation. Our voter numbers are the lowest in the world and a national disgrace. We have a completely uninterested, disenfranchised electorate and it's horrible. We're not a democracy, we're a hideous oligarchical plutocracy, and it makes me ill. Having more than just the two parties of corporate lickspittle buttlicking sycophants, indistinguishable except one-is-slightly-less-evil-than-the-other-one, would go a long way into reinvigoratiing the American people. We might even start getting political graffiti, like every other nation worth it's political salt. (I feel that the American lack of political graffiti is a sad commentary on American politics: to wit, people really just don't care even enough to spray paint their candidate's name on a wall. That's pathetic.)

2. Vote with your ATM card for one week in November. Everyone who doesn't have an ATM card can trot on down to the DMV and be issued a free one that's only good for voting. I mean, seriously, the fucking technology is already there. Any ATM in the country can recognize me and access my bank balance, how difficult would it be to write a program utilizing that network to vote with?

3. Eliminate the Electoral College. It's not 1805 anymore, people, and we don't need someone on a horse to tell us who won the election. One person, one vote, that's that.

4. National health care. National health care. National health care. I'm tired of living in a third world nation while more enlightened people everywhere kind of smirk via the internet and say in horrified tones: you mean you really can't even go to the doctor? No, I can't go to the doctor. I don't have insurance and I don't have money, all I can do is pray I don't get sick. That's a horrifying thing in this day and age and it's un-fucking-known in any other nation that has any pretensions to being a world player and even in a lot that don't even field an Olympic team.

5. Bye bye, Iraq. Sorry about all this. Apologies. See ya!

4 comments:

Gordon Smith said...

I love these ideas, though the ATM voting freaks me out. Wachovia can't even keep my bank balance straight, so it'd be hard to trust them with my vote.

National Health Care? We still don't have it? Oh you must be kidding! It's the 21st century, felicity. You're crazy!

Sweet Tea said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Sweet Tea said...

I disagree with Screwy. I think that the ATM idea is wonderful. The way voting is set up now, only die hards vote on election day. What single mom working two or three jobs can afford to spend hours waiting outside the polls? If she can make it to the polls.

We all have "secret pin numbers", why not have have "secret voting numbers",too?

My guess would be that it's just too simple. The American public is better off confused. If it were made too easy for folks than it just wouldn't be the land of the free.

Please note the sarcasm in the last two sentences.

I bank with Wachovia, too. My balance has always been accurate.

mygothlaundry said...

Yeah, I'm with Sweet Tea. The ATM idea is simple & awesome, if I do say so myself. Why reinvent the wheel? Why give Diebold the contract to build voting machines when the machines exist and are in place all over the country already? *dons tinfoil hat which is sadly beginning to look more realistic all the time* Oh, wait, because if you used ATMs and a new program it would probably be non-partisan instead of created specifically for the Evil Empire! *takes off hat* Okay, I know, but sweet weeping bebby jebus, sometimes I think the hat speaks truth.