Republicrats and Democans

Well, the name of this blog seems to have finally evaporated to the point of a misnomer. After much contemplation, I don’t think I can call myself a liberal anymore. I’m certainly not a conservative, but I am not a liberal either. I am so fed up with the childish games being played in Congress and the White House. It’s funny, as much as the Democrats and Republicans throw tantrums to display how “different” they are, they are a mirror image of each other.

I suppose the first time I noticed something was wrong was the build up to the Iraq War. While I was only in 8th grade at the time, I remember how eerily similar George Bush and Hilary Clinton’s messages were. In case the nation has a collective case of amnesia, let me reiterate: Both Hilary Clinton and George Bush were for the Iraq War, a monumental blunder that cost us over 4000 brave American soldiers. Yet somehow that doesn’t register with people. That somehow ol’ George orchestrated the entire war like some kind of mastermind. Well, he didn’t. He had the support of basically everyone whose name wasn’t Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul. Oh, congratulations to Obama for getting us out of Iraq… in December of 2011, real speedy job there.

The next event that disillusioned me was actually very recent, within the last six months in fact. It was after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Twenty innocent, precious children were shot and killed there. Many of them aging as young as six. It was a horrendous day, filled with evil that was downright satanic. Then, the politicians got involved, and proceeded to each become as much of a raging jackass as they could possibly be.

The Republican response was to insanely lobby for arming teachers. Yeah, because that’s what we need, having a Quick Draw McGraw inspired shootout in an elementary school. It’s also a good thing that there would never ever be an incident where a teacher dropped a gun, and a small child would pick it up. Idiots. Then you had the Democrats. Admittedly, the Democrat response wasn’t quite as cartoonishly stupid, but it was just as useless and still a huge slap in the face to the Sandy Hook parents.

They wanted to ban guns. This seems to be the automatic response to any crisis for Democrats. Just ban guns! C’mon, do it! Just forget about that Second Amendment stuff! That’s the thing, we as individuals in a constitutional society have the right to protect ourselves. If someone wants to go hunting with a rifle, that’s their right. If someone wants to defend their family with a handgun, that’s their right. Even if someone wants to collect automatic weapons, that’s their right too.

The problem is that when the political parties aren’t being exactly the same, then they’re a million miles apart. There’s never any middle ground. The case in point in the gun debate was the background checks. For example, Seung Hui Cho, the gunman in the Virginia Tech shooting, legally purchased his guns despite a laundry list of mental health history that indicated schizophrenia and as a previously classified examination said, “an imminent danger to himself or others.”

So, due to the nonsense played out in congress over their respective bullshit, nothing got passed. That’s right, nothing. It is still lawful for a crazy or severely depressed person to buy a firearm. Awesome. This is personal for me too, as when I attempted to commit suicide myself, I bought a gun the same day I went to the store despite a mental health history filled with red flags. Lives are at stake here.

John Adams had it right in 1789 when he prophetically stated, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other.” That’s us. That’s now. We have a broken political system.

Quite honestly, I think it’s beyond repair at this point. That’s why I don’t care anymore, at least concerning politics. I think people have made the greatest difference not as fat cat bureaucrats, but as Christians actively engaged in their community. For instance, slavery ended because of local abolitionists, by the time Lincoln “freed the slaves” he was redundant and merely making a political point to the Confederacy. Look to the church, not the oval office for true leadership.