It's campaign time.
The relentless onslaught of ads touting one politician or another are about to begin in earnest, and the overriding message will be "I'll fight for you!"
Who are they fighting?
Whenever there is a fight, somebody loses. There's winners and there's losers, and nobody wants to be a loser, so we either don't fight, or find somebody to fight for us.
I do not wish to fight. I do not want to hire somebody to fight for me. I don't want to lose, either. What to do?
Cooperate. Negotiate. Debate. Work things out. Compromise. Give a little, get a little.
Every time I see lawmakers vote the party line on an issue it makes me wonder what went wrong with our system of government. I'm no historian, maybe it has been this way since we began, and if that is so it is a miracle we have made it this far and accomplished so much.
How is it possible that educated people, people who persuaded the voting populace to pick them over the other one lose the ability to think for themselves once embedded in party politics?
Why must we be bombarded with an Us vs. Them message? Is it vital to our progress to choose a side?
If I am neither "Us" or "Them" then I must be "Nobody" whose voice does not count, somebody whose ideas are foolish, or outdated, a person whose insight is considered nonsense to Us and Them, and therefore an impediment to progress.
The Nobodies need to get out of the way, and let Them fight Us.
Let them beat it out of each other.
The result of the fight is unimportant, what matters is that somebody wins, one philosophy prevails over the other, Right is Right, and Left is Wrong, or Left is Right and Right is Wrong, whichever side prevails gets to win, and the other side loses, until the next fight.
Until they all lose.
Then, the Nobodies can put this thing back together.
And this time, NO FIGHTING!
They know that Divide And Conquer strategy works on voters.
I think that with the massive amounts on money in politics (and more and more every day) the polarity will continue to get worse, with fewer problems being solved. Every time I hear something to the effect of “throw the bums out”, I shake my head, and wonder, replace them with who? The system is what is most disfunctional… The amount of money required for a politian to stay in office is unbelievable. All are forced to play the game or just loose to the next biggest wallet…. a legal bribery system…. The money corrupts all the discussion as a us vs. them, one interest vs. another, not ‘how do we solve this’…. What would politics look like if the elections were all caped and publicly funded…?
Publicly funded capped elections? What next, abolishing lobbyists! Maybe then the "nobodies" might have a chance.