A Donkey, an Elephant and a Stag
One of my guilty pleasures is following the US election news. Guilty because I wish I was fascinated with my country's affairs as much. (I use 'much' and 'three news a year' interchangeably.) I've just registered with SPRM two weeks ago because I'm scared of my mother. She's going to nag me again if she finds out that I still haven't registered after so many elections. God, I'm too old for that nagging now.
It'll be great if I ever get around to understanding what these two US parties keep arguing about someday. Which is a small detail. For now they got me at how their multimillion-dollar campaigns and speeches crafted. If you're not afraid to poke fun at yourself, and don't have to scream and pop your veins out of your forehead to deliver your speech, or don't (appear to) find it okay to attack your opponents' personal lives -- the actual content will kind of just fly past me. And we sooo don't do concession speeches on our side of the world here. We usually go to the court the next day.
So I found diffen.com to compare the two parties and started mapping my political stance. As a start, am I a liberal or a conservative? Off the top of my head, I have to be a liberal because conservatives are probably some of those people I usually try to avoid in my life. But if you ask me how I'd define liberal, while I'll surely try to drop some clever words about accepting new ideas or something, an image of feather-wearing people at Burning Man would be the first thing that I'd think of. And conservative is how I'd explain my wardrobe and its five basic colours.
And I don't like any of the parties' symbols. Donkey or elephant? Neither. I prefer a doe or a stag, like Harry Potter's Patronus.
Most of the policies are not easy to decide on either -- I can't just pick one option with a simple yes or no, and I'm also too lazy to get myself informed.
At some point of my life, I might have agreed that minimum wage causes inflation. (I'm not sure now. Not because I've just received new info, but I can't seem to retain the old ones.) But I also think the rich should be taxed more. I can't see how you can justify a 26% tax rate for both 150k and 150m income earners. (I'm not sure what the US rate is like, I only know it has higher brackets.) Although, you cannot be poor earning 150k. How does the US have high tax rate but small government, by the way?
But I support gun control and more environmental regulations. And a reduced military spending, of course. Seriously, spend the money elsewhere, America, not invading other countries.
Other than that, Democrat is traditionally strong in California, Massachusetts and New York, whereas Republican is strong in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas -- and this is the only decision that I can make easily: You'll have to pay me a lot of money to make me live in Kansas. Please don't point out to me how I'm responding to this wrong. And as if America's foreign policy would be much different, anyway.
- You can also do quizzes like this one to determine your political position (because nothing a 10-question internet quiz cannot solve).
It'll be great if I ever get around to understanding what these two US parties keep arguing about someday. Which is a small detail. For now they got me at how their multimillion-dollar campaigns and speeches crafted. If you're not afraid to poke fun at yourself, and don't have to scream and pop your veins out of your forehead to deliver your speech, or don't (appear to) find it okay to attack your opponents' personal lives -- the actual content will kind of just fly past me. And we sooo don't do concession speeches on our side of the world here. We usually go to the court the next day.
So I found diffen.com to compare the two parties and started mapping my political stance. As a start, am I a liberal or a conservative? Off the top of my head, I have to be a liberal because conservatives are probably some of those people I usually try to avoid in my life. But if you ask me how I'd define liberal, while I'll surely try to drop some clever words about accepting new ideas or something, an image of feather-wearing people at Burning Man would be the first thing that I'd think of. And conservative is how I'd explain my wardrobe and its five basic colours.
And I don't like any of the parties' symbols. Donkey or elephant? Neither. I prefer a doe or a stag, like Harry Potter's Patronus.
Most of the policies are not easy to decide on either -- I can't just pick one option with a simple yes or no, and I'm also too lazy to get myself informed.
At some point of my life, I might have agreed that minimum wage causes inflation. (I'm not sure now. Not because I've just received new info, but I can't seem to retain the old ones.) But I also think the rich should be taxed more. I can't see how you can justify a 26% tax rate for both 150k and 150m income earners. (I'm not sure what the US rate is like, I only know it has higher brackets.) Although, you cannot be poor earning 150k. How does the US have high tax rate but small government, by the way?
But I support gun control and more environmental regulations. And a reduced military spending, of course. Seriously, spend the money elsewhere, America, not invading other countries.
Other than that, Democrat is traditionally strong in California, Massachusetts and New York, whereas Republican is strong in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas -- and this is the only decision that I can make easily: You'll have to pay me a lot of money to make me live in Kansas. Please don't point out to me how I'm responding to this wrong. And as if America's foreign policy would be much different, anyway.
- You can also do quizzes like this one to determine your political position (because nothing a 10-question internet quiz cannot solve).
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