Raise the Hammer

I am not quite sure what country this web-site (and author) are from, but I am guessing Canada? In any event, it does not matter where you are from, but more importantly that you are not from here. And for that I am thankful because it gives me the opportunity as an American to read view points of people from other countries. However, while you may have a a pretty good idea of what is going on over here and how our political system works, I believe there are some things you may be unaware of. You are correct about many RP supporters, many do get over aggressive and in doing so become so caught up in emotion that they become irrational. And i understand that many have a hard time if someone does not immediately agree with them, it can make debate a futile exercise. I am not sure if you realize the demographics of this group, though. I would say RP has about a diverse a group of supporters you can get, from age, to gender, to race to religion to ethnicity to sexual orientation. But, I would have to say the majority of his support comes from the 18 to 32 year old group, and predominantly white males (I have no statistics to support this, just an observation I have made as an avid RP supporter). I am a 27 yr old white male myself. Hard working, intelligent, decent citizen. I represent the quint-essential American male, I would say. I have never before really took a pro-active role in government until now. I have, however, noticed over the past 2 elections (of which I voted in neither b/c I did not feel it mattered) that neither candidate really seemed different, and I would not buy a car from them, let alone their garbage of empty presidential promises. I had also felt that corruption (as you pointed out already) is so deeply implanted within our system, and for such a long time yet over such a gradual period, that it is damn near impossible to anything about it save for revolt against our government much as we did in the late 1700's.

Now, many Americans have felt a hopelessness over the past few decades. Which brings us to RP. You may not agree with his ideas, but I do believe he does not just propose plans just to propose them, I believe he does have plans to support these ideas. It seems to me like you are focusing on the specifics, like how will he actually get a bill passed in Congress. The answer is he probably won't or can't.

And I think this is where you cannot fully appreciate the seriousness of the conditions over here. NOBODY can really do anything, nothing will happen quick. My average fellow countryman has regressed socially in my opinion. The mass of our people no longer think for themselves, they allow our media to basically make up their minds for them. ABC, FOX, CBS, NBC and CNN all have their favorites, and portray these candidates in a positive light. RP does not get mentioned very often, and when he does, it always that he is a racist, or that he has no shot.

I also think you failed to realize that Americans are not really rooting for RP himself as much as what he stands for. He stands for the fact that Americans, regardless of what our government or the rest of the world thinks, is not entirely lost. We are sick of corruptness, we are sick of lies from our leaders, we are sick of our rights and privacy being stripped from us, and we are sick of the people that have been trying to "sell" us a vote, instead of trying to improve our country.

For you to say that RP is the "worst agent of change" in this elections just proves that you really have no idea how low this country has sunk. Supporting RP is supporting a change of mindset for our country. A vote for RP is the ONLY way our voices will actually be heard by the government. Then, we have a lot of house cleaning to do in Congress. There is a lot of work to do over here, and it seems like RP might be the first step.........