Stupid Voters Enable Broken Government

[bara]

I think a lot of this goes back to education. There are many many factors at work in education. But the bottom line is stupid people make tend to make bad decisions.

Im also of the opinion that any one who actually wants to be in politics, probably shouldnt be.

[Greenday]

I feel like term limits would help this. At least dumb people couldn't keep voting for the same morons every election.

[mikoyan29]

I feel like term limits would help this. At least dumb people couldn't keep voting for the same morons every election.

I think term limits make things worse...

[HYHYBT]

Currently, we are running a 1.3 Trillion Deficit and that works out to about a third of the budget. The Super Committee is supposed to come up with 2.5 Trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years....assuming the deficit would otherwise remain the same...that means we add 10 Trillion to the Debt instead of 13 Trillion....So what difference will that make in the scheme of things?

Cutting a third of the budget at one go, though, would be disastrous all around, even in good economic times. So make cuts that would amount to 2.5 or whatever if left alone for ten years, which everyone knows they won't be anyway... and then, a couple years in when everything's settled from that, do another round of the same.

[Greenday]

Cutting a third of the budget at one go, though, would be disastrous all around, even in good economic times. So make cuts that would amount to 2.5 or whatever if left alone for ten years, which everyone knows they won't be anyway... and then, a couple years in when everything's settled from that, do another round of the same.

Fix everything now! I don't want to hear that it will take time to fix a mess that took almost a decade to get us in!

/sarcasm

[MadMike]

What really pisses me off are the people who rail and complain about how the people in office are screwing us over, then go to the polls and re-elect the same exact bastards they'd spent the previous year bitching about!

People like to complain about people who don't vote. I think people who vote without putting any kind of thought into it are even worse. This point was raised in a movie called "The Distinguished Gentleman." For anyone who's not familiar with it, Eddie Murphy plays a con man who goes into politics, and wins because his name is similar to a recently deceased congressman. One scene shows a couple going to vote, and the guy asks his wife, "Who is it that we always vote for?"

The main points that the movie raised were 1) Politicians, and possibly the system as a whole, are corrupt, quite possibly beyond repair, and 2) the majority of the voters are idiots and/or don't pay attention.

[AdminAssistant]

I'm sure that there are cases of blatant stupidity among voters. I don't doubt that at all. But it seems much more likely that people are just busy. They don't have the time or energy or want-to to try and wade through political commentary trying to get to the truth. I'll be honest, the Daily Show/Colbert Report is pretty much all the political commentary I watch any more.

[Andara Bledin]

In the world of the Internet, there's no excuse for being uninformed.

^-.-^

[Racket_Man]

once again I turn to George Carlin on the subject of voting

George Carlin On Voting

[mikoyan29]

Fix everything now! I don't want to hear that it will take time to fix a mess that took almost a decade to get us in!

/sarcasm

A decade? If only it were that short.

[HYHYBT]

In the world of the Internet, there's no excuse for being uninformed.

^-.-^

...but in another sense, it's harder than ever. Yes, there's lots of information out there. Maybe too much, and particularly too much of it that doesn't even attempt to be even-handed and simply informative. Sifting the internet for political truth is simply more than most people can do *well,* and most people think they are doing just that by only listening to those who already agree with them.

[protege]

I think term limits make things worse...

Agreed. Think about it, if you knew that your second (or third) term in office was nearly over, would you really give a crap about the issues? I have a feeling that most people in that position really wouldn't care. They'd leave the mess for the new person to deal with. But, if that new person was of different political affiliation...they might do everything in their power to make the situation worse.

[mikoyan29]

Agreed. Think about it, if you knew that your second (or third) term in office was nearly over, would you really give a crap about the issues? I have a feeling that most people in that position really wouldn't care. They'd leave the mess for the new person to deal with. But, if that new person was of different political affiliation...they might do everything in their power to make the situation worse.

Part of the problem is the scope of government. We have term limits for all of the State Government posts and by the time the person gets used to the ropes, they have to move on.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

In the world of the Internet, there's no excuse for being uninformed.

^-.-^

There's also a higher chance than ever of becoming MISinformed.

For example, if you Google "Is Barack Obama a socialist?" you'll probably get a ton of results back from somewhat legitimate looking sites saying that yes Obama is indeed a socialist, regardless of whether or not it's actually true.

[Andara Bledin]

There's also a higher chance than ever of becoming MISinformed.

The ignorant will continue to be ignorant.

Those who make any effort to educate themselves, even if they get bad information at first, will eventually learn that not all data holds the same value and not everything you read is true.

But if they just keep on learning nothing, the country will continue to regress until those in power who want a country ruled by ignorance and superstition get what they're after.

^-.-^