I'm sick of US politics as much as in my own country. It seems like there's a significant problem everywhere like the one we've got: both sides of politics waste time and taxpayer money arguing with each other about who's better, who's to blame, and fuck the taxpayer.

We have televised sessions here where we can watch our government supposedly answering questions from representatives of various areas of the country. One will ask a question to someone else. If the asker of the question is in the same party, it's a pre-decided question which simply lets the answerer ramble on for five minutes with propaganda that they'd like to spew. If the asker is from the opposite party, the answerer will mostly not answer the question, and instead spend five minutes telling us a hundred different reasons why the other side is crap.

Does this make you as physically sick as it does to me?

It's one big clusterfuck of a school playground. Name-calling, arguing about who's better, and who's to blame for making the kid across the street cry, and so forth.

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All group interaction can be boiled down to a playground analogy, especially international politics where nobody has authority over anyone else.

To answer the question in the headline, it is because they don't have anything else to say. If you can prove you are the lesser of two evil you can keep your job. If they answer the question, there will be somebody who doesn't like the answer; if enough people don't like the answer they lose the only employment they have.

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It's a dirty way to win an argument, basically.

The idea goes thusly: You don't have to prove you're right, you just have to prove that the other party is WRONG. Take that philosophy, apply it to politics and you'll see.

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Politicians are obsolete and utterly useless.

Our current system of government is criminal and does nothing for the betterment of humanity.

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To answer the question in the title - because it works. If everyone was really put off negative campaigning as much as they claim to be, people wouldn't use it. But it does work, so they do.

And for those who hate politics - try living in a dictatorship or kingdom. I'd rather live in the west than china or saudi arabia!

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

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@67,904

Except you don't really win. Someone says 2 = 5 is wrong and you say 7/3 = 5. 2 = 5 is very obviously wrong, but 7/3 = 5 is not any more right. You haven't won the argument you have just proved that the other guy didn't. Politicians need to come up with something that makes THEM right. Then they win.

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Quite simply the U.S government is fucked. People are to dumb to realize that most candidates for any office don't talk about anything but how bad the other candidates are. People don't even research issues anymore they just take one candidates word for it. The electoral college was set up becasue the founding fathers didn't think the the average person of the day would be able to make an informed political decision. That wasn't true then but is truer than ever now.

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Because it is convenient, and because confronting how fucked the political system (its methods of election for leaders, how they are financed and supported, most importantly the Electoral College and how shockingly badly votes are counted) is is entirely horrifying.

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