Tag Archives: Democrats

Watching the Right Television Shows to Come up with the Right Political Answers

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The current state of these United States of America shows us not very united in the states of America. It’s pretty sad because for the last two hundred and some years, we’ve weathered some pretty strong storms that should have only made us that much stronger. You know the old line of “whatever doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger” which ironically is the only thing I have left from the woman I once loved named Marisha; it used to be her favorite line for reasons that are neither important nor all that interesting. Well, that line isn’t working anymore. We seem to be much more about divisive politics than any concept of working together for a better solution.

George Washington is the one on the right

The political writer, Morris Fiorina once wrote a brilliant book called Divided Government. In this book, he argues against common sense in that he shows through statistical examples that when our government has been divided, we’ve actually accomplished more in Congress than when we’ve been under united government. Unfortunately, his analysis wasn’t forward thinking enough to project what might happen when divided government becomes an unworkable government, when the divisions between both sides might turn out to be the destruction of government, rather than the process that allows time for “cool and deliberate reflection,” a concept once deemed that would lead to the “real voice of the American people” by George Washington in a letter to Henry Knox on September 20, 1795. Right now, we’re in a weird political process that is completely destructive and causes very smart people to act petty and stupid. When looking for leadership, which is what people do when surrounded by annoying destructionists, we’re finding all of our leaders have become ten year old children who think that pointing at the other kids and saying “he did it” is somehow what America is looking for in its leaders.

If one were to look for allusions and metaphors to explain what is going on today, I can find no better example than that of television, which is often referred to as either the “idiot box” or the mind-numbing device that causes people to stop thinking. Why should we be surprised that what we’re receiving from our leaders is nothing less than the ridiculousness that comes from stupid television shows anyway? Unfortunately, the metaphors that make sense indicate that we’re watching the wrong television shows in hopes of finding some kind of mechanism to lead us to a better tomorrow.

Right now, we seem to have leaders who have latched onto some of the worst television metaphors to dictate the types of actions they are emulating in our government. If you watch any type of television news, like CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, basically all you’re getting from commentators and pundits is analysis that sounds like Howard Cosell or John Madden describing some kind of football game where players are trying to create brand new plays by doing stuff that people have been doing for decades, yet seem to think that it’s all original. During the election, it was like watching professional wrestling, where oversized behemoths yelled “I’m going to get you, Hulk-man!” as they rip off their t-shirts and promised bloodshed of the like never seen before. But we have seen it. It’s called bad politics, and it leads to bad government and horrible representation. What these types of metaphors really show us is that our leaders are playing another zero sum game with each other where no one actually wins because each side is only focused on winning, not on what they get out of winning in the first place.

I’m going to include another television reference that can explain where we need to be going and how we should be looking at our current political dilemma. Before I do so, I apologize because I’m going to be calling on my geek nerd credentials to do so. But in the end, it will be worth it, so stick with me on this. I promise. It will be worth it.

The show I’m referring to is one that was developed by J. Michael Straczynski called Babylon 5. Without getting into all sorts of geeky crap about the show, I’m mainly interested in one of the races that was developed during the series, called the Minbari, a race of balding aliens who were also deeply spiritual. What made them significant in the show was that they were running around the galaxy for thousands of years before humans took to space, so they had a lot more time to really mess things up. Their government was run by a 9-member council that was made up of 3 members from the religious caste, 3 from the warrior caste and 3 from the workers’ caste. During the seires, the Minbari ended up in a civil war between the two more powerful castes, the religious and warrior. Why I’m discussing them is because their spiritual leader realizes at the end of their war (and the way to solve it) is that the religious and warrior castes had completely forgotten the most important caste to their civilization: the workers’ caste, the one that created all of their ships and buildings and was the one caste that suffered the most during the war fought between the two vying for power. As a result of this realization, their leader then elevated the workers’ caste to more positions on the council so that they would then be the dominant caste from that point forward.

These aliens didn't get along either, so their people ended up killing each other. Nuff said.

We have the same problem right now. We have two political parties who are fighting amongst themselves for power in our government, yet the ones suffering the most are the workers, the common citizens who don’t actually have a seat at the table, yet are the ones who are victimized by whatever decisions the two political parties make in their name. But these two parties have stopped being representative of the people a long time ago and now only really represent themselves, but claim to represent everyone else. But they do so in name only. Look at the events that have transpired over the last decade and that should be readily apparent to everyone. We’re fighting two wars that were picked by people in power who cared zero for what the common person thought about these wars. Yet the people fighting these wars are the common folk who make up the entire organization of the military that has no voice in the decisions the government makes for them. During this last election, the people were angry and spoke by using the only voice they have (the ballot box) and threw a whole bunch of people out of office because they haven’t been listening but speaking rather than listening. So a new group of people are now moving into office, and they don’t seem to get it either. Rather than realize the people sent them to Washington to get things done, their leadership thinks the people sent them to Washington to continue fighting with the government and again, getting nothing done.

So, let’s look at this from a different angle and treat government as a hospice where our goal is to treat the situation as triage. Perhaps if we look at it that way, we might realize what needs to be done to fix this problem. But I suspect that even with such an easy allusion, they still won’t get it. Or they just won’t listen. They’re pretty good at not doing that. But this triage is a blueprint to what people actually want done, even though I realize no one is interested in actually listening to the people. Think of this triage as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, where we take care of our basic needs first and then work our way up to actualized desires once our struggle to survive is taken care of.

1. Our people need jobs. That’s been hurting us from day one. This means that the first thought should be to getting people to work. This doesn’t mean fast food jobs or retail jobs. We are a post-industrial nation that has a high-end technologically driven citizenry. This means that we need manufacturing jobs that develop high-end concept materials, like electronics, medical needs and computerized knowledge. This means government needs to help these types of industries grow and grow in our own country, not by farming out the manufacturing to third-world countries so only executives of these countries have jobs. We’ve done enough outsourcing as it is. We need stabilized positions in this country, which requires a serious focus on technological education for a workforce that has grown stagnant in building 20th century technology that is now being taken care of elsewhere. We need to focus on the 21st century and beyond by satisfying that market in a way that only our workers can do it. That means constantly being at the forefront of these markets like we used to do back in the early part of the 1900s with the previous markets of technology.

2. Once jobs are stabilized, we need to focus on making sure that people have money to spend. I’ll let you in on a little secret that government right now has no clue about (because they certainly don’t seem to get it). People don’t care about the budget. Politicians and government wonks do, but the average person doesn’t care about the budget. What the average person cares about is that the government doesn’t keep taking more of what they bring home from the jobs that they do have. This means that this whole budget mess that Obama, the Republicans and the suddenly backbone finding Democrats are fighting over is pissing off the average American. Right now, those out of work are about to lose their unemployment benefits that were about to be stretched out further. The fighting means they will now receive nothing. That pissed off a lot of people who still can’t find jobs (see number one). The second plank of the problem is the Bush Tax Cuts. People don’t really care that the rich are getting them, too. They only care that when January comes around they don’t end up paying hundreds of dollars more in taxes that they weren’t paying before. If you want to piss off the bulk of the American people, let those tax cuts expire.

This is the wrong time for the Democrats to suddenly rise up against their own president. They somehow think that people are going to believe they’re now on their side because they want to punish rich people. The average American isn’t going to agree with that. He or she is only going to see a smaller paycheck and then be really pissed off at the government. If you want to lose any mandate you think you have, that’s going to do it.

3. People want to see their government getting along. They don’t care that one side wins over the other. Most Americans aren’t that tied to the fight that they care. When they are suffering and see infighting, they see a system that doesn’t work. That makes them go nuts during elections, kind of like the last one. If nothing happens as we move towards the next election, people are going to revolt again. And when they start to realize that revolting doesn’t actually change anything, they’re left with one of two choices: Ignore it and become apathetic, or revolt the way people have done historically. That second choice seems like such a wild card that no one in government believes it will ever happen. Almost every revolution that destroyed a previous government came from nowhere and happened almost overnight. NO ONE sees it coming. And that’s what makes them so scary. So, continue to ignore the problems and hope they’ll go away, or do something about it.

What that means is our government representatives need to start looking at how to govern rather than how to zing the other side. If that doesn’t change, our government probably will. Just not as anyone wants, because changes of that magnitude rarely turn out as anyone actually wants.

How Do Anarchists Vote During an Election?

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There’s been a lot of talk about elections lately, and whenever that happens the topic of voting tends to rear its nasty head as well. For people living in western societies, where they tend to be heavily weighted towards voting, there is a certain satisfaction that comes from the concept of enfranchisement (voting). Unfortunately, the concept of not voting is rarely given the respect it deserves, and quite often the idea is seen as horrific and counter-productive. I’d like to take a moment to talk about just that.

It’s understandable why not voting isn’t given a whole lot of respect, and we don’t have to go much further than history to figure out why. Throughout most of the history of us as a people, we’ve been struggling for the ability to make our voices heard. More often than not, the people in power have done everything to control who gets a say in the bigger picture, and the years have been a series of steps towards allowing everyone the ability to be properly represented when it comes to making decisions. In the olden days, kings made all of the decisions, and the people who chose kinds were the rich, elites who controlled pretty much everything. Fortunately, we don’t live in that sort of dynamic any more.

Or do we?

In the old days, a group of elites would get around and decide amongst themselves who should be the next king. Sometimes, they emphasized these decisions with violence, but in the end it was usually a class decision, often supported by economic clout. Today, anyone can run for office, and those people are decided by the whims of the people. However, it should be pointed out that so few of us have any say so in any of these decisions whatsoever. Quite often, to even be considered, a candidate must already be known by enough people to make it onto the ballot. In order to do that, the potential candidate must already be part of the elite class itself, because so few others have even a smidgen of a chance of being recognized by others when it comes to elections. This means that economic clout is necessary to get a person recognized, and before you know it we’re right back where we started with economic elites pretty much deciding who gets to run for office, and even more important, who gets taken seriously. We’ve even gone so far off the deep end that a number of our future leaders are choosing themselves based on their own economic clout, buying their ways onto the ballots, and because they have such connections already, we’re left to choose between them and other people considered viable by other economic elites.

Now, let’s take the argument even further, and let’s look at it from the perspective of someone like me, someone who hates the very nature of power itself. You see, I have a real problem with people who want to be considered the elites over the rest of us. I don’t see my elected officials as people who are trying to help me, but I see them as people who see themselves as special, who see themselves as individuals who think they deserve to rule over others. Because elected office is simply that, a vie for power. No one ever took a position of power because he or she was trying to be one of us, but quite often someone will pretend to be one of us in order to become lord of us (the recent debacle of Christine O’Donnell is exactly an example of that where she has been trying to say that she is “us” in hopes of ruling over “us”). Sure, every now and then you get an enlightened, potential leader, but most of the time it is some person who has felt that his or her education and experience makes him or her worthy of vying for power. And then once in that position that person becomes untouchable and set apart from the rest of us.

Don’t get me started on the eventual move towards dishonesty and corruption, but that seems like a natural progression that I think psychologists could easily link between the typical behavioral patterns of someone who seeks power and someone who abuses one’s position. I’m not surprised that so many of our leaders of government come from the professions of law and business.

But what this means to me is that I’m not a fan of anyone who purports that he or she should be representing me because honestly, no one can best represent me but me. And I wouldn’t in a million years ever say that I would be the best person to represent other people because I only know how to represent my own interests, and yes, I would be just as corrupt as everyone else out there in politics, because I would mainly be looking out for what I consider my own best interests. Sure, I would want to help people and do good things, but that doesn’t mean I deserve to be in power any more than the guy who sweeps the street outside where I work each day. What makes me more worthy of power than that guy?

Yet, a whole bunch of people think they deserve to go into government to make decisions for the rest of us. I find this wrong. I feel that any time someone decides to vie for power, that person should be feared because I have yet to come across a politician who was really interested in the desire to help another person by personally sacrificing one’s own well being, because that is what would be necessary for me to believe that a politician can best represent me. Instead, I find almost everyone of them to be much more interested in assisting themselves, and if you’re lucky enough to be part of the rising tide of those boats, then you’re going to benefit as well.

So, I find myself not wanting to participate in elections. Yet, I’m constantly condemned because I say I don’t believe in voting for the people running for office. People heard me complaining about the Bush Administration, so they tell me I should be voting for Democrats. But Democrats aren’t all that interested in doing anything specifically for me, unless I happen to be lucky enough to benefit in specific things THEY want for themselves. The last two years haven’t been all that great for the country, but then that doesn’t mean that the Republicans are going to make things any better for me either. They’re interested in taking care of their own, much as my definition of any politician would fill. So, voting for any of them is a useless cause because I don’t believe any of them should be in power to begin with.

So what is a quasi-anarchist to do? There are no solutions to this problem other than to compromise and give up on what one believes because the status quo isn’t going to offer anything better.

What would make things better, in my opinion? A lottery of elections. I don’t have a problem with people serving in government. I have a problem with people wanting to be in power. But a lottery would make it available to everyone, and anyone. But that will never happen because the people who want power will never give up power to the masses.

You see, I believe in democracy. If we lived in one, I think it would be the greatest government we could ever have. I just don’t believe in the fantasy we try to sell ourselves about what we think is our democracy.

But I do vote. I vote every election. I just don’t vote for people. I go into the booth and choose the yes and no votes for issues I find to be important enough for me to want to decide. That’s democracy to me. But whenever I see a name behind a position, I ignore it.

I just wish people would stop condemning me every election because I don’t want any of the people that want me to vote for them.

If the System is Broke, No One in Power Wants to Fix It

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There’s an interesting political drama going on in South Carolina right now. I guess I should elaborate because there’s always some kind of political drama going on in South Carolina. But this time, it’s about a man running for office. His name is Alvin Greene, and he did what no one expected he would do. He upset a party politician of long standing in the Democrat primary for Senate this year. He was someone with no credentials, no money and no name recognition at all. Yet, he managed to get 60 percent of the vote from the Democrats and put state legislator Vic Rawls out to pasture in the election.

Well, now we’re starting to see all sorts of skeletons in his closet, including the fact that he’s up for some kind of felony for showing porn to some girl at college and trying to entice her to his room. Now, let’s be honest, what college guy HASN’T done that, but that’s really a different issue now, isn’t it? It seems there are all sorts of weird shenanigans going on in his past, including that he may or may not have been thrown out of the military. He refuses to comment, wanting to focus only on the issues. But for all I know, there may be absolutely nothing wrong there. He may just not want to talk about his past military service. I mean, that is his right, if he chooses to make it so.

But the Democrats are raging mad right now, demanding he quit the race, even though the “people” chose him. They’re aghast that this potential felony machine is on their ticket. Well, let’s put aside the fact that so many politicians seem to have felonies on their records these days and don’t seem to think it causes a problem to their political careers. What’s the real issue here? It appears that the Democrats just don’t like the fact that someone ran an end run past them, and they weren’t the ones in charge. The7’re claiming the Republicans must have been behind his campaign, claiming that he couldn’t have afforded the $10,440 filing fee to join the race, that some dark, sinister force must have fronted the money to hurt the Democratic Party.

What this issue is really pointing at is something much bigger. For too long now, the common person has felt out of the loop of politics, but has been subjected to it by people who feel they should be making all of the decisions. There’s a special club of politics that has a hefty membership approval process, and most of us don’t fit the mold. Alvin Greene certainly doesn’t. The two parties in this country have done a very good job of making sure only the well-connected get in, much like a union boss makes sure only his cronies are the ones surrounding him at any one time.

Alvin Greene refuses to leave the race and only wants to talk about the issues. The Democrats want him out of the race so they can focus their attention on people they already like and know. He’s an outsider, and they don’t like that.

But what this is really pointing at is something no politician wants to face or discuss, and that’s the possibility that the people are rejecting the party machines that are already established and deciding to go with outsiders. I mean, let’s face it. South Carolina has been a cesspool of politics and scandals lately, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the people of that state decided to just buck the system and choose anybody but the usual suspects. What is interesting is that the political machine in place doesn’t handle this sort of thing well, and we’re seeing a backlash as every political entity in the Democratic Party is moving forces into place to circumvent ANYONE from challenging their authority and power.

South Carolina could be a very interesting place to mark the beginning of something very significant, or it will serve as the place where a last stand for the people was made before it was stamped out forever.