Thoughts on politics from E. Medina, G.E.D.

Today I made the mistake of trying to learn about and better understand the Tea Party movement. All I understand about it is that it’s a misnomer – it has no factual connection to taxation without representation, it is not an actual revolutionary event or force, and rather than a ‘movement’ it looks to me like a herd of disenchanted rightists indulging in the joys of herd conformity. Tea party events do seem like funner places to express ignorant and/or discriminatory sentiments than, say, KKK meetings or your local Evangelical church. Plus, you might get on TV!

Anyhow, it made me think a little about government. I’ll list my thoughts on various topics in no particular order!

1. Electoral College – NO!

This system has been a shit system for years. It’s not going to stop being a shit system. It desperately needs to be tossed, particularly now that voting is largely an electronic process. This isn’t the only problem with the election of government officials in the U.S., but it’s a glaring one. Voting should be made more accessible, both in the process required of voters and the actual counting of votes.

1. Age Limits on Substances, Military Service, Driving, Et Cetera! – CHANGE!

These are truly, legitimately fucked. They make no sense at all. The more impact any restricted activity has on others, the more seriously it should be taken, particularly if it can directly kill another human being. Military service and driving should be 21+. I feel that voting should be 21+ as well. As for marriage, the ‘parental consent’ thing doesn’t sit well with me – I doubt that most 18 year olds fully understand the potential legal and financial repercussions of marriage. 21+.

Smoking and drinking are both primarily matters of personal responsibility. No one should be forcibly subjected to second hand smoke or inebriated people, but with the exception of dependent minors and cohabitation scenarios that are usually escapable, this rarely happens. I think that setting consumption at 14+ with formal parental consent and purchase at 18+ would be reasonable.

Sex is a strange domain. I can’t decide if the sliding scale system really works. I can’t decide how much say the government should have in such matters. But I do think that sex must legally be defined as a consensual act between adults. I don’t know when people are suddenly adults, or when people can be considered sexually mature. The lack of sexual education and the decreasing age of sexually active minors is alarming in combination. If educated minors were having safe sex with their peers, I might feel differently. Still, if history, mythology and the collective human experience has taught us one thing, it’s that you can’t stop two willing individuals from having sex. 16+ does seem reasonable in most cases.

The dissonance between this and the age at which one can appear in pornography is something I’m of two minds about. On one hand, if a 16 year old can have sex, who is to tell him/her that they cannot do it on film? But what 16 year old will be thinking objectively about the potential repercussions, positive or negative? What 25 year old will be thinking objectively about the repercussions? It’s impossible to say. But, since pornography is an industry where your level of responsibility regarding safe sex protocol can determine the health and productivity of dozens of other people within months, I think a cap of 21+ would be wise.

A lot of this has to do with my opinions on the limits of the term ‘personal freedom’ as well as my knowledge of developmental psychology, which I would say is better than the current clusterfuck of ages the U.S. government has set.

3. TAXES! — Oh boy…

Let me state that I don’t think it’s unfair to tax the rich more than the poor. Let me also state my belief that what constitutes a legitimate non-profit tax exempt entity should be seriously reevaluated.

Anyhow, let’s evaluate a tax system that forces most people to hire a professional service at least once annually because they do not understand it. This is taxation without comprehension, which sounds almost as bad as taxation without representation. Maybe it is! I’d venture to say the current system is broken, and the IRS is not helpful to very many people.

There are many alternative tax systems, but I’m not sure which would be best. An ideal tax system would be simple to understand for most people as well as socially aware. It would also be effective in keeping the nation out of debt and deficit. The money would contribute primarily to infrastructures and programs to improve quality of life for all citizens. And a superduper-ideal tax system would ensure that taxpayers felt confident that their money was being spent by the government on things they agreed on or benefitted from.

Lately, you hear a lot of people talking about Fair Tax. Fair Tax is a very idealistic approach, because it works under the assumption that people would make wise choices about what they buy. The problem here is that ‘wise spending’ is part skill, part personality trait. I have a strong feeling that it wouldn’t have the radical effects some propose – those that spend wisely would continue to do so, while those that spend unwisely would incur even worse debt than they do now. This could be a Very Bad Thing – observe the mortgage crisis to understand what happens when poor investments and big debts are combined. Sure, Fair Tax sounds great to most people, and on a basic level, it is! But when you consider that its benefits are based on a broad assumption that people will behave a certain way, it starts to fall apart.

The current tax system is progressive, which is something I just learned! Thanks, Google! This means that ‘your tax bracket’ doesn’t mean what it sounds like it does. In fact, I made a chart. It’s sort of like a champagne fountain or trying to figure out how many measuring cups a given amount of flour fits into.

….yep. Taxes.

5. Separation of Church and State — YES!

I shouldn’t have to explain this. Also, using Photoshop really took it out of me. Essentially, ‘state’ is something with roots in logic, sociology, statistics, politics, and many more -logies and -ics. Clearly, it is a Greek invention. More importantly, it is defined by principles that are all encompassing – that is, they take all people in a given state into account to reach conclusions and make decisions.

Church is something with roots in emotion, psychology, faith, culture, history, et cetera. None of those areas take all people in a given tract of physical space into account, particularly in the U.S. You can’t make political decisions based on how people feel or what they believe because people in the geographic spans the decisions would affect are diverse – invariably, you would rob people of basic rights if you made legislation based on beliefs and feelings. This worked out really well during the Dark Ages, you guys. Seriously.

If the U.S. really feels the need to follow any ‘church’ or ‘creed’, it should be the one of personal freedom – a term that gets thrown around and abused rather grievously.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said best –

“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”