Individual politics aside for a moment.

I was looking at the forum tonight and noticed a trend.  I thought to myself, can we ever have a thread about something that isn't either Obama-is-good, McCain&Palin/Republicans-are-bad, or the-problems-that-can-be-argued-to-be-caused-by-Bush?  I realize it's election season, but come on!  Looking at the first page of the forum, 2 topics are about the first, 19 are about the second, and 5 are about the third.  That's 26 out of 31 threads, not counting the stupid image/video thread (though I can only guess which way that one leans).  The remaining threads are one on Ron Paul, one on Bob Barr, one on abortion, and my youtube video on Obama. 

I'm not trying to tell people what to write or how to think, just that it might make for more interesting discussion to talk about issues themselves a little more rather than why the right is always and invariably wrong.  (to be fair, of the 26 threads, 7 of them are issues related and not specifically attacking one party by their title line, though all but one of them (the abortion poll) are unabashedly about how much America sucks).

Some topics I'd love to discuss without worrying about where one candidate or the other falls on them...

• energy independence
• laws and regulations by the government (from corporate regulation to the war on drugs and the drinking age)
• age, race, sex discrimination
• social issues -- abortion, gay marriage
• privacy rights
• gun rights/regulations
• government funding vs. free market
• entitlement programs -- universal healthcare, medicare/medicaid, welfare
  

The parties and presidential candidates have views one way or another on all of these, but frankly, I'm tired of hearing about how the awful it will be if McCain wins, how awful the US is because of Bush, [I was going to write "and how good Obama is," but really we don't have many/any threads on that one (I'm not being partisan, just saying)].  I'm interested in your views, not on the people or the parties, but the on issues themselves. 

The real core of political and policy discussion is WHY abortion should or shouldn't be legal, WHY big government is good or WHY big government is bad, and not what a candidate said, didn't say, meant to say, etc.  At the end of the day, all the candidates are going to have things in their favor and things going against them.  We can spend hours on these forums posting youtube clips of gaffs and soundbites, serious or funny, in context or out of it, and yell at each other till we're blue in the face and in November one of them will get elected.  I'm not going to change your vote and you're not going to decide mine (for the record, I haven't decided), so let's talk about the issues that drive politics, not the people who run, decide, and usually screw it up.

Best case scenario, we have new and insightful discussion, get people to question their beliefs and maybe even question some of our own.  Worst case, we're still just blue in the face.

Guess most of the people here that are not going to bother to vote are Democrats.  Imagine my surprise.

This is just the giant dook-slinging contest that happens every 4 years. It comes and goes.

I, for one, *entirely* believe that it's possible to talk about these kinds of things without getting into terrible politics/politicians. We all have beliefs, whether or not there is a candidate to support them. If we could talk about these things without being roundabout *dicks* then I'd be very happy.

But there's always going to be someone that wants to be even *more* obstinate, wants to stand out even *more,* and by god, is going to show you up every step of the way.

Did I catch that right?

I think at age 16 you should be able to choose to either drink or drive, but not both. Whichever you don't choose you then get when you are 18. I think the voting age should stick where it is, but anyone under 18 should be able to apply to vote early by taking a test (and make it a felony to coerce their vote). In a perfect world everyone would have to take a test before they were allowed to vote, but there's kind of a long nasty history of that sort of thing and honestly I think most people are so stupid that the test would have to be idiotic to not disenfranchise 75% of voters. Plus it's kind of a violation of human rights and even if dumbfucks deserve to have their human rights violated it's still unjust.

I think we're all pretty accepting around here. I know I've gotten into vicious arguments with people here and never held it against them, I think they do the same for me. Except Crass, I think that Nazi fuck still holds a grudge. With the "general public" though I definitely hold back and keep my extremism mostly to myself.

Thanks Leon, if nothing else I hope to provoke thought.
The story for how I became an iconoclast is a bit long, aliens are not involved but I did spend much of my childhood feeling alienated.

I'm not really interested in selling my ideas. I think people should come up with their own ideas. Which is pretty much why I don't care if I offend anybody. And being an anarcho-capitalist, pretty much everyone is my enemy.