Confusing Messages

The people in charge are really feeling their oats. It's hard to miss them when channel-surfing, crowing in front of the cameras about how they will use their new power to change things.

But I'm confused. I keep trying to understand what they believe in, but keep getting mixed messages. Maybe somebody with insider knowledge can explain these apparent contradictions to me:

They say they believe in free speech. Except that speech they find offensive. Burning American flags and publicly wishing for the assasination of the President and Vice President are not offensive. But a cross or monument containing the Ten Commandments are offensive, and must be removed from public sight post-haste.

They care about all forms of life. Some of them would like to force us all to become vegetarians so we don't kill any more cows and chickens and pigs. They despise the death penalty for our most hardened criminals. But they vigorously defend the "right" of a woman to kill her own baby anytime up until it emerges from her womb. And they want to help the sick and elderly die early so they are less of a burden on the rest of us.

They despise war and are pacifists. Those who threaten us from abroad must be negotiated. If we give them what they want and try to make them like us, there will never be a need for war. But they love United Nations Peacekeeping missions, where soldiers in blue helmets go to third world countries for show while mostly unarmed and trying to avoid being shot.

They support legalization of so-called "recreational" drugs from marijuana to cocaine. At the same time, they pass laws against smoking and certain foods that contain trans-fats. So do I understand this correctly? I can shoot up with my drug of choice even if it kills me, but I can't smoke tobacco (but a joint would be OK), and I can't eat a cheeseburger and fries?

They claim that the evil rich don't pay their fare share in taxes, even though the rich actually pay more of the national tax burden than everyone else combined. But the evil rich somehow don't include these elites who inherited their wealth or acquired it through political activities. Hollywood celebrities are also exempted from the evil rich category. It seems that the evil rich who are paying the freight on everything the government spends should be punished. But if they're punished, where will the government go next to get their money? Because the rich won't have it anymore after the government takes it from them, and the poor don't pay any taxes.

Finally, somewhat related to the last item, these people fancy themselves as the modern verions of Robin Hood. They claim to want to take vast amounts of money from the wealthy to "help" the poor with everything from housing to food to welfare. Yet somehow most of the money they collect doesn't go to the poor. Instead, it goes to political pet projects and the bloated bureaucracies managed by the friends of the elites, where most of it is spent on salaries for bureaucrats who sit around thinking up new rules for the programs and documenting them in voluminous books nobody reads or understands.

I'm very curious. Why again do Americans vote these people into power?

I just can't figure it out.