"Politics"

Why do we need to label and place people into categories? If I'm not a democrat, then I must be republican. If I'm not right-wing then I must be left-wing. conservative. radical. liberal. fuck that. I'm none of that. Even those that refuse to belong to any political party has a term made for them: independent. Well I guess if you're going to make me label myself, then yes, I'm an independent (not to be confused with the Independent Party, sneaky fucks). A friend of mine was told he was a republican because he questioned the health bill. I was told that I was conservative because I question whether or not this current widely accepted mitigation approach towards global warming is the right way to go about it. Well, I'm also a huge supporter of gay marriage, I believe in free trade, and I'm all for legalizing marijuana. Am I still a conservative now? Because the guy next to you just called me a liberal for believing that people should be able to live their lives the way they want. And my favorite line yet: "you're such a crazy liberal san francisco hippie." Well shit if being liberal means being an openminded person from a city filled with diversity and culture, then put that shit on a bumper sticker and slap it on my forehead. I think the problem these days is that people are so afraid of being labeled a certain term or placed into a certain group, that it prevents them from actually listening to both sides of the argument and choosing a stance of their own. Rather than standing up for what they believe in, they end up choosing a certain side in an effort to avoid being placed on the other side. this is backwards. if anything, it should be the other way around. Decide on what you believe, then find others that feel the same way in hopes that you will be able to get things done through power in numbers. I think this was the original purpose of forming these affiliations. These days, people throw these terms around as if they were synonymous with right and wrong, cool and uncool, acceptable and unacceptable. Since when did being democrat/republican/left-wing/right-wing/conservative/radical/liberal imply being good or evil? And what do these terms really even mean these days? I don't believe there's such a thing as being a "pure" democrat or republican, conservative or liberal (and since when did liberal become widely used as the opposite of conservative? shouldn't that be radical? things change...?). I think the majority of those that come off as a complete, 100% (insert political party or ideology here), is either closeminded or misinformed. In a sense, the discussion on politics has slowly come to parallel the discussion on religion...both involving ignorance...but that's for another blog.