screw the left and the right...

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In a lot of ways I tend to agree more with the left than right on various issues....but as of late democrats vs republicans, U.S left and right both piss me off. I am sick of telling people 'but I am on the left and don't do the things you say 'the left' does.' and I am sick of telling people 'just because I identify more with the left on this issue doesn't mean I am a Hillary supporter. There is plenty of immature, us v.s them behavior from both sides thus I don't want to pick either side....I just feel so done with it.

Left, Right...cannot put myself in either box anymore, and is there any real reason to?

You might want to look into Jeffersonian democracy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonian_democracy ). When I tell people that I am a Jeffersonian constitutionalist, it throws them off. They don't know how to respond.

vote gary johnson then

left and right are outdated terms, really. there's different flavours of global capitalism to choose from, while the alternative - actual old school leftism - is not represented.
so, if you don't feel represented, it might be because there's only different degrees of social and market liberalism on offer, not really a left option and a right one.

it's what thatcher called "there is no alternative", which is repeated every now and then by angela merkel.
you hasically get to vote between binary cisgendered bathroom door signs v. unfendered bathrooms, everything else is better left to the technocrats.....

If you can slog through the "Unabomber Manifesto", readily available online, you can see echoes of Jeffersonianism in Kaczynski's ideas, such as the belief in the virtuousness of the small, subsistence farmer and the idea that living life "close to the land" inherently made most men virtuous and moral. Kaczynski's belief that technology caused mental illnesses in human brains that had evolved for a much simpler existence and that this insanity is at the root of most modern problems is also a distant descendant of Jefferson's antipathy towards industrialism. These same ideas can also be faintly detected in some flavors of Asian Communism such as Maoism during the "Great Leap Forward" period, the Khmer Rouge, and the Juche philosophy in North Korea.

I do think too much seperation from nature and the land of the earth can be detrimental...I am certainly not anti-technology but I think it needs to cooperate with nature in order to be most effective and the least environmentally and health impacting.

I feel similarly.

Am I the only one whose first thought after reading the title was about a threesome?

I always assume it means take strong moral positions and then just toss them out when you get the power...Jefferson wasn't near as unique as he thought he was...

Power corrupts, true. But at least Jefferson was a thinker, something exceedingly rare in today's politics. The last real thinker we had in the Oval Office was Reagan. After him, presidents mainly sought to enrich themselves and their friends instead of actually governing. Clinton the First had a booming economy pretty much by a stroke of luck, if there had been no Internet his tenure would have been marked by the sort of economic decline we see now, only the Gen Xers would have been a LOT louder and harder to handle, at least the Xers realized they were screwed, today's kids would rather have their noses in their phones. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, so he could write too. Obama needs a teleprompter to tell him when to take a bathroom break, he's a joke compared to Jefferson. Out of all the "Founding Fathers", Jefferson was probably the smartest, unless you want to include Benjamin Franklin, which I'm leery to do since his contribution was rather minimal, he died in 1790 and was generally too old to be involved in the nitty gritty of the revolution and formation of the new government.

I really need to read a good biography of Jefferson, I'd always held him in high regard, personal moral failings aside, but he really comes off as a conniving, hypocritical dick in Chernow's Hamilton, but that book is so hagiographic of Hamilton that I'm not sure I trust it on Jefferson. Definitely a complicated historical figure in any regard, but then they all kind of are.

As long as we have two parties that go out of their way to offend one another, we will not advance in the way we need to. Once we can respect each others right to exist then we can have a meaningful conversation but in the mean time...

If you have the time, Dumas Malone's six-volume bio is outstanding.

But here is the irony.

What you're sick of isnt what is actually happening now.

Yes-the bad behavior, and rancor of the '16 election maybe worse than ever but it is not actually breaking down so much as being between left vs right. And thats another indicator (along with the populist uprisings in both major parties) that a major realignment is about to happen in American politics.

Both parties are still feuding within themselves as intensely as between each other (even though primary season is supposed to be over). There have always been other axis (other dichotomies) in American politics than just right vs left. And many of these other pairs of poles are what the current debates are about. For example the axis of nativism vs globalism has always been perpendicular to the right-left axis (there have always been left wing nativists like Nader, and rightwing nativists like Buchanan- and opposing globalists of both stripes). Now globalism vs nativism is a louder debate than left vs right IMHO.

Trump is secular, divorced, and not religious, yet has fanatical religious right supporters, but is also disowned and opposed by many of the religious right.

Many Trump supporters say that Sanders is their "second choice", and many Sanders supporters say Trump is their "second choice". So its not just you. Much of the electorate is also not following the right vs left script.

There is also libertarianism and authoritarianism, i.e. how intrusive may government be... whereas previous Republican governments have had Patriot Act enacted etc. which intrude electronically upon everyone, the latest promises to intrude upon the very identities of everyone... and it comes from someone who uses so much artificial colouring no one has ever glimpsed his real identity.

Jefferson was an interesting thinker for sure, however he was also a slave owner.

I also think many people who praise him, are most unlike him. He was quite different from modern Republicans and Conservatives.