What are you thinking RIGHT NOW?

[SimbasMate]

Well that's the most I can do on that. I don't know what else to add, so if he doesn't like it he can shove it.

[Queen Elsa]

Alright, I'm done. I obviously will never get it. There are just too many problems with every single one. I'll just stick to the books, since at least in there things always work.

[Shadowfax]

I love how mine and KD's question threads have turned into 'ask a walking dead question' threads

[Si-Amber]

I really need to get these presents wrapped and cards written.

[Carl]

I love how mine and KD's question threads have turned into 'ask a walking dead question' threads

Ikr? It's beautiful.

---

Eating feels weird. One might think I really had become a survivor of the apocalypse... I barely eat before I feel stuffed and like I should save the rest for later. I haven't even eaten half of what was on this plate... and it wasn't a full plate.

[Queen Elsa]

I don't know what to do anymore. So many nice things, and yet it turns bad. That's how everything in my life goes.

[Shadowfax]

Seeing how epic and huge they've made Fallout 4, I can't wait to see what they'll do with the next Elder scrolls game I thought Skyrim would be a hard game to beat.

[Gemini]

Having many parties also has a big weakness-there will be many hung parliaments and coalitions.

We already tend to have things like that, tbh. Maybe if we had a very strong head-of-government, like in a parliament (or a dictatorship, not that that's a good idea but yeah), a two-party system would be most effective, but America isn't designed to have a lot of centralized power and its government is purposefully inefficient. There's a lot of cooperation that needs to happen to get anything done as it is... I mean, look at our Congress right now. We have a Democratic president and a Republican majority, so every piece of legislation basically gets shut down before anything can happen to it.

So honestly, I think a multiparty system would be better. Not only would it offer more choice, but multiparty systems in general tend to be focused more on... well, the party (and its ideals), as opposed to candidates. Which means, hopefully, less stupid people like Trump who steal the spotlight for no reason.

I dunno why so many Americans support the Republican party in general. I'm not saying the Democrats are godly saviours either but the Republican Party has always come across to me as the "multibillionaire party" that only super-rich people ever benefit from and not the actual working class, but that's just me. Really need to get rid of the two-party system.

Giant Segue: show

I don't really agree with either party, personally. I've seen how both of them work and it's a lot of the same crap from both sides. That being said... I think the Democratic party more fits my ideals, but that's really only loose. The problem with having only two parties is they are basically like these two large, competing umbrella groups, so it's hard to really fit into either of them neatly.

Personally, the Republican party is in a really rough spot right now, and young voters are moving away from them in droves. It used to be that the votes of the <25 year-olds were split pretty evenly (and the same was true for the elderly), but now a large majority of younger voters are going less Republican. The non-whites as a whole are also moving left. Most of the right's remaining supporters fall along the lines of people who are older, white, and religious. In other words, still a significant portion of America, but by no means everyone.

Overall, if they don't get their act together, they're going to be in a lot of trouble. And seeing this latest batch of candidates... well, it seems as though their party leadership has simply gotten too far out-of-touch and too far right for most people to relate to. If Trump doesn't win, I think that they are going to have to majorly rethink their entire platform if they want to stay alive.

Anyway, this is personally what I think. And I really hope that they do make these necessary changes. Even though I'm a bit left-of-center, my whole family is basically Republican and I know they're all going to vote Republican. Even my dad (despite being way less religious than basically everyone else related to him, and actually agreeing with a lot of what I said when I told him why I was agnostic) is pretty far right like most military veterans tend to be; I don't think I've ever heard him say anything good about Obama, for example. And my grandmother, who I grew up with... well, she literally has a Ben Carson bumper sticker on her car and she listens to people like Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee and etc., etc. all the time. In fact, I was only ever really exposed to Fox News growing up.

(Some of it really isn't as bad as people say, I promise... but some of it... well, some of it is way out there. But that's what my family buys into. I don't think any of them on my mom's or dad's side are Democrats, by a wide stretch, so I'm basically like the lone rebel out of the entire group... not that most of them really mind, but yeah, I was not raised Democrat by any means and these ideas that I'm sharing are not things I grew up around at all; I'm honestly still a bit unsure of exactly where I lie on a political scale, especially in regards to economics.)

So... yeah, Republicans definitely exist here, and I've known many of them. And I kind of understand the appeal in some ways; it seems to be the values that they claim to hold, like hard-work and self-sufficiency and such; they tend to have a lot of support amongst poorer, relatively uneducated country people. However, I think that the leadership is often contradictory and hypocritical and contrary to these ideals. They claim to want smaller government, for example, and while that's all well and good and very understandable, especially for someone who values and seeks independence as much as myself, the problem that they don't seem to realize is that 1) governments tend to get bigger over time, which isn't always bad... not to mention that having a government like we did in 1780 simply isn't practicable anymore, and 2) they seem (for the most part) to be okay with things like incorporating Christianity into the state or into schools, or allowing the secular central government to deny gay people the right to marry based on religion, or imposing strict laws/a large military budget/a large police force to instill order, even though all of those things go directly against the small-government idea. Like, honestly... I disagree with the Republican party on all of those policies. Probably the only one I can kind of side with them on is the death penalty, but I still think that that should only be used in extreme cases. Everything else just doesn't make sense to me. If you are for the government butting out of people's lives, then why are you using the government to instill morals in people and coerce them into behaving? Doesn't that seem odd to anyone? Surely that can't just be me.

Furthermore, as you pointed out, their support for the rich upper-class is also confusing. As I mentioned earlier, the Republican party gets a lot of its votes from the poor and rural population. To them, the Democrats are... I dunno, the city-slicker party? And while it is true that the Democrats tend to support a lot of things in cities, and labor unions and such-like... they do tend to have the interests of the poor in mind. And most of these aforementioned country people, hard-working though they may be, are, in fact, poor. So it seems counterproductive for them to want to support the right as it is now.

I mean, these are people who claim to miss the hard-working spirit America used to have 'in the good old days', and claim that people today are just entitled and etc., and they claim that they really want to support the little guy (small businessmen and farms, which makes sense... I'm an agricultural major myself, and I want to live in the country someday - I've seen how hard-working some of these people are and how there's not enough appreciation for farming and rural life. I get that. I totally get that), but then the Republicans are the same ones who want to lower taxes on the rich, even though they already pay significantly less than in other Western countries and even though these large rich people/corporations are often the ones buying out these small farms and businesses and taking the land and polluting it, or building on it, and making it unusable for agriculture.

I think a lot of it has to do with this American dream and these rags-to-riches stories that we all get sold on over here. We kind of recently addressed that in the sociology course that I'm taking... basically, the reason why so many Americans are against higher taxes for the rich is because they live under the assumption/hope/etc. that they will one day become rich themselves. They think that all these millionaires and billionaires worked hard for their money and are all deserving of respect. Now granted, does America have a lot more social mobility than some other places? Of course. Some of those people did in fact work very, very hard to get to where they are, and there's no denying that. But that doesn't mean that poor people are all lazy or that hard work is going to guarantee success - not by a long shot. A lot of rich people simply were born with more opportunities in life than others. Not to mention, there are plenty of hard-working people who never make it and a lot of inequalities in place, and I think the Republicans, at the end of the day, simply turn a blind eye to it, even when affected by it themselves.

Going back to my dad, well... he's definitely an example of it. I love him to death, he's very hard-working and he has a lot of that spirit that the Republicans idealize... but again, he isn't rich. Not by any means. Nor has he ever been. I mean, he literally grew up in a household where he and his siblings would have to eat cereal for dinner, or not eat at all, and his dad was never around. He was poor enough to be on welfare for basically my entire childhood and only just recently got a job. He's been through so much crap just to get where he is and start a new career, even though, technically, he's nearly retirement age already and probably never will have that much money.

But he still reads books on how to get rich and votes Republican and supports people like Mitt Romney. And if Trump wins the nomination, he will probably vote for him, too.

So yeah. That basically sums up the Republican party. And why Americans support them. I don't really agree with it, but y'know, that's how it is, I guess.

It honestly makes me feel kind of sad, because a lot of them are really don't understand this. The diligent, hard-working poor people I know deserve much better candidates to pick from than more crappy billionaires who are only going to take advantage of them. And I think both Trump and Hillary are exactly that.

//end discussion, sorry... I wanted to make a short response but ended up typing out a book, lol.

[HereWeStand]

Reminds me of that time I heard the US government shut down because the Republicans in congress threw a fit. That's most likely a gross oversimplification but that's what it sounded like.

And yeah, in all honesty while I'm as left-wing as they come, I can respect the right-wing ideal of being rewarded for hard work and the like. The problem is that it just isn't that simple in reality. Most people never get the chance to become rich regardless of the hard work they've put in their working lives, nowadays you either have to be either ridiculously innovative, really lucky or be born into wealth to get rich and unfortunately that excludes most of us.

Reminds me of a quote I've seen thrown around recently: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." It's not 100% true but there's definitely some truth into it.

[Tsuki]

Seeing how epic and huge they've made Fallout 4, I can't wait to see what they'll do with the next Elder scrolls game I thought Skyrim would be a hard game to beat.

Guess we'll find out at E3. I'm also looking forward to Ark. Looks pretty good!