The People’s Derelict Houses
Why bother with a Legislature (or Congress for that matter) if the expectation is that (nearly) everyone among the Honorables will vote dutifully, if not blindly, and consistent with the dictates of “Party Leaders”?
Why is it that the legacy political parties are afforded the privilege of mandating who speaks, what gets heard, and how votes are decided within what are colloquially referred to as the “People’s Houses”?
The tendency is for the entrenched legacy parties to present unpalatable binary choices. They present our technicolor world in stark black-and-white, but it is a false dichotomy. Despite their seeming polarization, there is a complicity afoot. One cannot exist without the other. Rather than being separate and distinct, the political classes represent opposite sides of the same coin.
Regardless of whether the coin comes up “heads” or “tails” …. “Democrat” or “Republican” … “Conservative” or “Liberal” … it is America that loses. There is no real incentive to “fix” societal ills. There is more profit in arguing about them incessantly. Why “cure” a disease once when you might be paid to “treat” it for a lifetime or for generations even?
Government is management by crisis. If there are insufficient crises, in either number or scope, to justify the continued existence or desired expansion of government powers, political minions callously sit back and allow naturally occurring events to fester into full-blown crises. If the crises are still inadequate, then they are entirely capable of creating them out of whole cloth.
This how we get incessant “wars” against such nebulous and indomitable foes as: Poverty, crime, drugs, disease, terror, hate, etc. We know that “all is fair in … war,” and war can serve as an excuse for any manner of waste, destruction, and atrocities.
Rather than a collection of representatives, who speak for the people — for their respective constituents — we have a cadre of power-hungry narcissistic egomaniacs, who purport to speak for everyone. Elected “Representatives” go through the motions. They play for the cameras. They “engage” through social media and otherwise.
However, when was the the last time that one of them said or did something that actually mattered? When did they offer a persuasive floor speech or engage in meaningful debate? When did they through their own lives demonstrate a better way of doing things? How many of them are so inspirational as to instill a level of confidence such that you would be motivated to follow them into battle — any “battle”?
Do they serve a purpose other than filling a seat? Are they there to offer unique insight and singular perspective or are they there to dutifully read a script of someone else’s creation?
There can be little doubt that the primary objective among many (professional) politicians, if not most (or all), is to look out for “Number One” (i.e. themselves). They want to do just enough to “justify” their continued existence and thus reelection, but they do not want to do anything too serious as to jeopardize said reelection (or to jeopardize their continued “purpose” or to threaten their thriving fiefdoms).
“The People” are but a means to those self-serving ends.
