My last ever stand-up comedy performance, before scheduling problems got me out of the game:

https://youtu.be/69cShEPEQ...

Malum consilium quod mutari non potest.

The two "parties" are just two rival corporations in the business of selling political seats to wealthy special interest groups. Choosing one over the other is like choosing between Coke and Pepsi. They're both just going to rot your teeth. The only real difference between Democrats and Republicans is the marketing.

As for the politicians, they don't have to be appealing or persuasive or even reasonable. As long as people hate/fear one, they'll vote for the other, and vice-versa. More importantly, they'll donate money to the parties' campaign funds (even if it's the day of the election) with the same fanatical gullibility as someone sending in a check to a crooked televangelist.

Our system is not democracy. It's extortion.

The United States is not one nation, but many nations joined by an overbloated federal government and a media-manufactured monoculture. Imagine a North America where each cultural region is its own nation: Deseret, Acadiana, Gullah Geechee, New York Metro Area, Southern Florida, Dixie, Navajo, Lakotah, Cascadia, Coastal California, Appalachia, and of course, independent Texas, Alaska and Hawaii. Now ask yourself "why not?" Is it just fear of change?

Covid-19 is a rerun of Spanish flu. 2020s wokeness is a rerun of 1990s political correctness. Zumba is a rerun of dancercise. Gen-Z fashion is a rerun of Gen-X fashion. People hypnotized by phone screens is a rerun of people hypnotized by television screens. Murder hornets are a rerun of killer bees. Everything that happens today, for good, for bad, or for indifferent, has happened before. These are not "strange times" we live in. This is the way the world has always been.

The Cold War was an interesting time in history. The time in which we are currently living is not. Case in point: So many of the best original movies of all time in a contemporary came out during the Cold War, but these days, most of the big movies are remakes, period pieces, or fantasy movies. There has been a sudden surge in digital technology which has not yet reached its full potential. People are fascinated with ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, the Roman Empire, the Old West, Pirates, Vikings, Victorian England, and Prohibition-era gangsters... but nobody is interested in the Byzantines, the Akkadians, the Roman Republic, Colonial America, or the Neolithic Era. We are living through the transition from one of the "interesting" periods of history to one of the "uninteresting" periods, and future generations will only consider us a footnote in the events leading up to whatever the next "interesting" era will be.

Eventually, we're going to get to a point where automation is doing the vast majority of the jobs, and 3D-printing will become so advanced, that most products can be created instantly and for virtually no cost. At that point, money will serve no logical purpose, and the whole socialism/capitalism debate will become moot.

The problem is that this transition won't happen overnight, and we're going to be seeing drastic increases in poverty and unemployment during the interim. Instead of our leaders struggling to maintain the status quo, what we all should be doing is putting together a think tank to devise solutions to make the inevitable transition to a moneyless technopoly as smooth as possible.

If ranked-choice voting is good enough for your local talent show, it should be good enough for your state.

If the necessary federal departments were privatized, and then hired as government contractors to the individual states, we would no longer have any need for a federal government. The states could call a constitutional convention and write a new constitution with a decentralized government. Just a simple bill of rights and an agreement on a financial aid plan, and each state could be essentially its own country.

The two major political parties are just two sides of one coin, working together to marginalize third parties and independents, and continue to con people into making campaign donations. It's a business. Neither side is actually serious about doing good for the nation.