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.