I've never been a democrat. I feel good about that. like people respect it for the first time in my 18 years of voting and first time in my life.

5 years ago, I would have asked you why you feel proud of closing your mind like that.e But these days it's almost like saying "I've never been in a cult. I feel good about that". I hope one day I can live to see a real political movement in this country that I can get behind. I've only ever supported democrats or republicans in the context that one was going to be worse than the other, and it didn't take long until they proved me wrong. They know most people choose their parties permanently that same way, and as long as their opponents keep getting worse, they can always continue to safely lower their standards even further. Politics in America will always be getting more corrupted, more toxic, less concerned with helping people or using its power for good, and more about one-upmanship, strawmaning, hypocrisy, dogmatism, blind loyalty, subverting the media (not just the mainstream media), taking bribes from lobbyists and special interests and the X industrial complex behind closed doors, and keeping everyone foaming at the mouth over some kind of retarded trivial controversy like someone making a non-PC tweet, or the new Star Wars films being made by SJWs. Even the Libertarians, Greens, and I assume all the even smaller parties aren't immune to this, and even if they were, they will never get into power. The Democrats and Republicans control the elections and the media, and they would sooner see an actual civil war break out than ever allow an alternative party take their political thrones away from them. I hate our government. We all know what kind of garbage is happening in it, but hardly anyone wants to do anything about it because they're too blindingly loyal to whichever of the two parties they oppose the least. It pisses me off so much that we all just let it happen, we fucking let them step on us. We let them create the NSA, send our military out to police countries most taxpayers never knew existed, expand the police state, etc etc. And do you know why? It's because both parties were responsible for at least part of it at some point. Bush did it, Obama did it, Trump is doing it, and the next guy will do it, and the next guy, and the next one, forever. I fucking swear, when the boot comes to stamp on their faces forever, half of them will quietly tolerate it because it's their parties boot, and the other half will only be opposed because it's the wrong guy. And people say that our elections are democratic? They say that we are free? Fucking please. Only about half of our country votes, yet 'the will of the people' never manages to leave any 50% abstained positions vacant. Of the half that do vote, only a small minority participate in major party primaries. And the parties themselves severely limit how many choices you actually get, so everyone is forced to choose the least of a handful of evils. Finally, voters are faced with about two guys for any given position- they both appeared out of nowhere and none of the voters have any reason to trust them besides faith, but that's what they get. And how much sway do 'the people' get through these candidates? When you factor in all the special interests, all the lies, and the grueling beuracratic process in which a bill becomes a law (and is inevitably mutilated by unelected technocrats)? 'The people's effect on the government is very limited. This is abso-fucking-lutely not a democracy, this is an oligarchy with a stupid popularity contest every two years. I'm sorry for the wall of text rant, this stuff just gets me riled up. Ask yourself this: if you're proud of never having been a democrat, are you proud of always having been a Republican?