Politics Have Become A Form Of Religion
Now maybe you could say this is an over exaggeration, but I'm sure many will agree that the push for political ideologies has become as dangerous and intense as the attitude taken on by religious fanatics.
People are acting like political candidates are prophets and their political parties are religions. What do I mean by this? Well the alt-left and alt-right that take dominance in the media for what is covered paint a very poor picture of the current political climate. People are more polarized than they ever have been before. People have begun identifying with their political views on their social networks and they feel that their political views are a major part of their identity. With people being refused to be served for their political loyalties, riots, and prejudice amongst other things, we are getting closer and closer to having a need for political identity to become a protected class.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/3o7bu6ctZy3qGJyBkk/giphy.gifThe innate problem with this is that religion while it has its flaw, rarely changes. Now when you have people acting the same way towards political identities it becomes much more dangerous because unlike religion political party stances on different topics can change all the time. This means that the set of beliefs and values held by the average person is extremely volatile and typically can change and be influenced by emotional appeals to social hysteria. The three forms of social hysteria are crime, terrorism, and drugs. These are then used over the years by various political figures to take away rights from you and slowly take back the freedoms you were previously promised. A great example of this is with the major drug reforms allowing for greater invasion of privacy and less reason required for searches and investigations due to the urgency created by culture and stigmas around drugs.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/10EtstiYSXgOEo/giphy.gifThere are many many more examples of this and why this is so dangerous and so important to all be aware of. We must also consider the notion that politicians aren't necessarily in support of the ideas that they are promising to push for, but rather they are in support of getting YOUR support. One of my favorite monologues by George Carlin is the this one about politicians and why they are so corrupt.
Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'
I'll end with this. They have us fighting the left and the right, but we never think about who's on top. The left and the right have little to no power whatsoever, and yet we put all our efforts into fighting the people who have little influence because we're the ones talking about the problems. Not only that, but it's becoming more and more taboo to talk about really anything important. We can talk about the weather all day, but God forbid I bring up the election and everyone is about to break out into a fist fight or ignore the topic entirely. Is that the goal? Make it so touchy that we can't even discuss it rationally anymore? It's working if it is. Let's all push for a better future where we can discuss political ideology, religion, race, and all the prevailing issues of our time without becoming hostile. Let's unite!