Current State of Our Politics

One point of view on where our country’s politics are at

Mason Dunleavy, Opinion Writer

To start off, I strongly believe in capitalism and our beautiful republic. I strongly believe in the American voters to not follow the same path many other countries have followed. If you are a socialist and get offended by this, please read through my arguments.

The biggest problem to me is identity politics and how easily people are feeding off of it. If you don’t know what identity politics is, it’s when candidates are chosen not because of their agenda, but because of their sex, race, religion or any other of the descriptive boundaries set to divide our nation, this allows voters to relate to the candidates in a way other than their policies, which ensures more votes.

 

Our current political system is tethered to identity politics. If you could vote during the Obama – Romney presidential race, did you vote for Obama? Did you vote for his agenda and policies? Or, did you vote for him because he is black? I’m guessing many voters had no clue what he was pushing for, they simply wanted to see the first black president. During the Trump – Clinton presidential race, did you vote for Hillary? Did you vote for her agenda and policies? Or, did you vote for her because she would have been the first female president? Like Obama, I believe Hillary achieved a majority of her votes simply because of identity politics. People don’t know what they’re voting for. They vote out of emotion instead of policies.

 

Am I the only one scared by this? The Democrats are relying heavily on identity politics as they shift further and further to the left. It’s an easy way to secure votes from those who aren’t informed or don’t want to deal with politics. I would bash both sides, but you don’t really see it from the Republicans.

 

With our political system and heavily biased media organizations, people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC as you’ve probably seen, are getting tons of attention. She recently proposed “The Green New Deal,” filled with elementary imagination and unrealistic goals. Let me take a few passages out of this historically stupid proposal that she had to delete and re-upload due to criticism. I do not feel bad for being harsh, if you can find the original proposal give it a read, it’s embarrassing to know American voters put someone with that little of economics knowledge into a position of power. Not to mention her and her aides later lied about it too.

 

Here are some quotes, “Universal income for those unwilling to work,” “Complete modernization of infrastructure within 10 years,” “Make all fossil fuels obsolete within the US.”

How are we supposed to pay for this? Sure, that all sounds well and good, but look at the bigger picture. Her “brilliant” solution is to print more money. Seriously? I’m no expert in economics, but I find it hard to believe our dollar would hold up legitimacy with our ever increasing $22 trillion-dollar debt if we just printed money. The projected value of this plan is in the tens of trillions. I can’t even fathom the impact this would have on our economy if someone like this had the power to pass it. She doesn’t care about the actual real-world effect this would have.

 

So what party does AOC affiliate with? She’s a woman and of Puerto Rican descent, a fresh face, well equipped with identity politics to get those votes. She supports the new movement called democratic-socialism. This out of nowhere, “democratic-socialist” movement has me terrified with how many supporters it has. Is the word “democratic” added to make it seem less bad? A socialist is a socialist. The way a socialist achieves office doesn’t matter, they will ruin an economy. This has been proven over and over, look at Venezuela, which was once the richest country in South America and a formidable world power. They voted in a socialist who became a dictator, as they normally do with so much government power, and their economy is now in shambles.

 

I do not care who you vote for. I want you to know what you’re voting for. I care about the American people being educated in their politicians’ policies and what they’re actually willing to do for the people. Don’t vote for someone just because of their sex or race. Vote because they’re genuine and honest about what they’re going to do.

 

We don’t need bigger government. We don’t need more social programs. Let capitalism be capitalism and the economy will be better off.

 

“Here in America, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” – President Donald J. Trump, State of the Union 2019