It should come as no surprise that Serj Tankian (System Of A Down, etc.) had some thoughts to share on the current U.S. political climate. Speaking recently with Americanrockscene.com, the following exchange took place:

“I know you’re a little bit political. Is this election as depressing to you as it is to me?

Serj laughs. Here’s the thing, if you want more choices you have to create more choices. We need more parties and that’s been the case for many, many years. Even the Communist party of the Soviet Union had two sides of the same coin, they had kind of a liberal side and a conservative side, they were kind of like two parties, kind of like the democrats and republicans, in different ways obviously.

But I point that out just to say that with two parties it’s not much of a democracy. But what makes it less of a democracy is money in politics, the K Street lobbying firms and groups like Citizens United, who make corporations into people.

New Zealand just enacted legislation that made a very important river to a tribe a legal entity, so that no one can pollute it or use it for anything else. I think that’s a good example. Instead of making corporations people and giving them rights, we should do that to nature, so that we can protect it, ya know? We are definitely heading the wrong way.

There’s more money in politics that ever before. Less legislation having to do with reforming campaign finance. We gotta switch it all around. The real problem isn’t just the choice of candidates, it’s what’s happening around it. The money in there. The electoral system. The choices of candidates.

We really need a healthy left wing party in this country like the Green Party or — I’m down to start a socialist party because President Obama is not socialist. The republicans are calling him socialist and I’m like, “come on,” the guy made legislation where you have to buy insurance from private entities. That’s not socialism, there’s no public option. Most of his policies are centrist, just to the right of center, sometimes left of center. That’s not socialism, but apparently, America has no idea what socialism is.

I jest a little bit about starting a socialist party but what I mean to say is that there is no absolute on the line that we call economics. There is no absolute, we used to be a capitalist country before the industrial revolution. We’re a capitalist country now as well, right?

However we are a completely different type of capitalist country because we didn’t have workers rights then, we didn’t have women’s rights, we didn’t have minimum wage. You could call that capitalism and what we are now socialism if you like. Or not. What I mean to say is, there is no absolute point in anything. It’s just a lever, and you go this way and that way.

You can call it what you want. But it’s really about how much you decide to take care of your people. Or don’t.

What do you think about the religious beliefs of the candidates?

I’m not as concerned about the candidate religious beliefs as I am their policies. Mitt Romney’s policies are, well first of all, he’s gone back and forth between so many different policies. First he supported health care in Massachusetts and then he turned a 360 and said “I don’t like it anymore I was wrong. Everything I thought, was wrong, I repudiate”.

He’s just trying to get the right wingers on his side but ultimately they are failed policies of the past. It hasn’t worked for America. It’s left us in debt, it’s left us in wars. And the fact that he actually even said that he doesn’t care about 47 percent of America.

I would fucking toss him off the ticket now. That’s offensive. His answer was that it wasn’t a classy way of explaining it, he didn’t even refute it. He admitted saying those things.”