The Unnecessary Stupidity of Being A Politician

Our two party system has failed. Think about it: salespeople have found a hack in a system that, as imperfect as it was, started out of a legitimate concern over the tyranny of monarchy. Elections, the darling of democracy, have become a simple game of “low lying fruit” - to borrow a classic sales term. When you know that all you need is 50.1% of an electoral college majority, which is technically less than the majority of the people, then you have plain and simply figured out how to hack the system. A system, mind you, that was not put in place for “hackers” to create power sharing clubs. It was intended to one day unite all the people. Not that the founders would necessarily agree with the letter of this list, but let’s call it the spirit of it: poor, rich, middle, black, white, female, male, native, immigrant. 

The stupidity comes in the realization that you don’t need to play two people against each other. Or in the case of an entire nation, half the people against each other. When you find the true common denominator in people, powerful agents of change and transformation like love with responsibility, compassion with accountability, and empathy with productivity, you find that you can lead the world beyond the wildest dreams of mediocre Machiavellians. 

Instead, what we have is the oldest Machiavellian play in the book. The Nazis and the Soviets mastered it, like the perfect assassins they became. But like the nazis and the soviets, perfect assassins are soon enough removed from their bully pulpits. They can fool some of the people some of the time, but, to quote GW Bush, “we won’t get fooled again” (with apologies to Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey on that intellectual property).

The scary part is how fast misinformation turns into disinformation. Which is essentially propaganda. Apparently it rears its ugly head every 50-100 years or so, which is just enough for a generational memory to pass. Makes sense, I suppose, but it doesn’t make evolutionary sense. It is the equivalent of the average addict throughout his or her lifetime falling back on self-destructive behavior. Over. And over. And over. Again. 

When simple minded elites crack the code of “plain speak”, AKA “telling it like it is”, they can do the impossible: they can rally poor and disadvantaged folks to do and believe anything a trust fund wealth-hoarder says. They can have them venerate the ground they walk on, just because they spew out the exact same prejudices. I mean, throughout their lives they were marginalized because of those same prejudices, and now the president of the United States is talking like them? Oh man, he is indeed the savior. The messiah finally come down to earth to help wipe out the blacks, browns, yellows, and reds. Rise up. Grab your guns, and let that hatred lead you to the promised land. Like it always does. We promised you it would.

Paradigm Lost

In a more perfect union we would be just a few orange tweets shy of bullshit fatigue. An America where the only people tuning in to the shitshow are pundits, trolls, and politicians. Or as I believe Cher put it, gypsies, tramps & thieves. The rest of us, the true majority, would theoretically know better and be united, like it fucking says on our name.

But, we don’t live in that “more perfect union”, do we. So off we rush to swallow that bias confirmation date rape drug. With our sincere regrets, founding pops, that more perfect thing didn’t quite work out. I mean, don’t get me wrong: a lot has improved since you guys demanded liberty for... um, well, not-exactly-all. 

But maybe that has been the problem all along. You guys didn’t quite believe in your own message yourselves, did you. It was a flawed prime directive from day one. You didn’t like it when a royal family of dicks messed with your freedom, but I cannot tell a lie: pass that Aunt Jemima syrup. Mmmm, hmm.

Now this one’s gonna sting just a little founding pops, but don’t shoot the messenger: Britain abolished slavery thirty years before we did. Yeah, ouch. 

But it’s alright, I still love you. I look to the past for the intention of the lesson, and maybe a paradigm shift or two. Certainly not for greatness, there’s nothing great about ignorance. The only great thing about our past, all of our pasts, lies in the fucking miracle that we didn’t kill everyone. Especially given the sheer amount of ignorance we carry around with us. We didn’t know shit 250 years ago, but we knew enough to walk away from single-family rule. We created a multi-family rule, and it was a step in the right direction. As imperfect as it was, it had elements of greatness in it. Don’t get me wrong, I do admire and respect the paradigm shift. We built a sacred temple of checks and balances, and saw that it was a good thing. 

So here we are, two and a half centuries later. But instead of carving our own greatness all we have done, besides finally abolishing slavery AND apartheid, landing on the moon, and stopping a tyrannical megalomaniac or two, is consolidate that multi-family rule thing. We turned our sacred temple into a country club. A “reality” shitshow. No paradigm shift here to see, more like paradigm shit. Instead of making our own greatness, we got lazy. And fat. And stupid. Must be an empire-ending thing, is it not, Pax Romana...

So maybe that’s where our big misstep lies. Our founders may have set themselves up for partial failure with that half-assed notion of liberty and freedom, but at least they didn’t set out to create another empire. In fact, they shunned the very notion. It was more of a “let our people go” moment, not a “our ruler can fuck the planet up by pressing a button” dystopia. But, that little dictator we all fight inside got the best of us, didn’t it.  

And here we are. Founding pops, meet your offspring, Napoleon and Snowball the pigs. Animals in a barn, one that used to be a temple. I don’t mean to point the finger back at you pops, but maybe if we could finally understand where we went wrong on day one, we just might be able to pick up where you left off. And build a better paradigm, to finally shift the world like you did. This time without a fundamental lie poisoning the well. A well we’ve been drinking from for about one quarter of a millennium.

It is time.

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