this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Both sides are same /s
"Entitlement Reform" has been a watchword in both parties going back to the Reagan Administration.
Democrats will tell you they've got an innovative exciting new solution to slow the rate at which health care costs rise, then shift a bunch of public sector money over to private sector subsidies.
Republicans will tell you they're cutting fat out of the system, then transform a bunch of public sector spending into private sector tax breaks.
Healthcare gets more expensive and less accessible. Each team blames the other one. A few socialists in some of the bluer states suggest we try a public Medicare-for-All model, then get primaried out of office in the next cycle by a pack of lobbyists in blue waist coats.
"Ah, but the pawl and the gear are clearly two different components doing separate things!" I cry, to any sucker who will listen.
It doesn’t always feel that clean cut to me. I’m not arguing that you are wrong. You are absolutely correct! You are describing a huge problem.
But our stupid voting system is another problem that serves to keep that first one in place. Small uprisings against the two party system might be noticed but they will be filtered out. To change the system it seems there has to be widespread and persistent discontent and rebellion well beyond what we’re already seeing. We’re definitely moving in that direction though, for better or worse.
That stupid voting system means that if you are going to support a third party with good ideas, you must necessarily withdraw your support from whichever of the pawl and gear you prefer to the other. Enter ranked choice, star, etc.
So in an election like 2024 when it comes time to cast the actual vote, I’m left thinking: So what if I take my finger off the pawl there, and what we thought was a gear starts spinning like a buzz saw and cuts my fucking leg off?
I guess going loopy from blood loss while I point my femoral artery at people like a garden hose and find ultimate rest knowing I was right about the system sure beats dying from nuclear winter.
So that’s what so many can’t ignore when it comes time to choose. Yeah if we elected Harris we’d be living in a country of capitalism and inequality, with Israel doing horrors under our wing. It wouldn’t be a good outcome.
But compare it with what we got. I’m just some employed straight white father living in suburban nowheresville USA, but I would very much rather my government didn’t have a gestapo, or bomb Iran, or sell access & secrets, or leave NATO, or support fossil fuels, or work against green energy, or round up people who have been living a peaceful productive life and destroy those lives by the thousands because they are ethnically undersirable to the base.