Politics as football and fecal matter

Politics as football

Ahhhh... it's Monday morning, and everyone is second-guessing yesterday's game. Well... it's actually Friday, and the second-guessing is about the election, but the political talking heads sound very much like the sports commentators.

This morning, every winner is claiming that their victory "means" that the public (even those who voted against them) is 100% behind everything the winner stood for, and against everything the loser stood for. Remarkably, this is true even in races that were very close, with the voters quite divided in their opinions.

The unvarnished truth is that nobody has much idea why anyone voted the way they did, because elections almost never offer clear choices. Why would Minnesota voters choose to keep a Republican governor, but turn out the Republican Secretary of State, Auditor, and Attorney General, and switch the majority in both halls of the legislature to the Democrats? I dare say that there is not a single voter whose ballot was validated... not one voter whose choices were all winners. Mine certainly weren't... I voted NOTA (None of the Above) to most races.

So, none of us will be very satisified with the results, unless we're just willing to write off some choices in exchange for others. Those who consider themselves party loyalists can feel good if their party did well, but even those whose party did poorly in total will grope for "meaning" that pleases them. Here in Minnesota, the Independence party was well-treated by the media, included in debates, and races were clearly considered 3-way contests. Yet, none of the Independence party candidates won. The IP candidate for Governor gathered 6.43% of the votes cast.

Democrats, in analyzing their gubernatorial loss (by exactly 1%, 46.71% to 45.71%) in the face of a fairly widespread Democratic sweep, will now blame the Independence party for taking votes away from their candidate. Again, nobody knows whether that is true or not, but alternative parties are often blamed for loser's losses. It's possible that the IP will itself claim to have been the difference in races... which will boost their own egos, but neither knows whether their claims are actually true. The IP can feel satisified to have maintained "major-party" status in Minnesota because a statewide candidate achieved over 5%.

Losers everywhere will claim to have "changed the discussion" with their campaigns. Of course, winners will make the same claim and be a bit more justified in so doing.

Politics as fecal matter

Politics is, crudely put, shit. We may be tagged as Blues and Reds, but politics is absolutely as brown as fecal matter. We all eat splendid-looking, colorful foods, in carefully planned, named, described, and presented dishes, but the remaining results we try to ignore as we flush are always about the same color, and don't smell anything like what we started with. Doesn't that describe our political system perfectly? Every couple of years, we're bombarded by splendid presentations on TV, radio, print, e-mail, and in person, each doing their best to get our votes, but, regardless of all that, and regardless of what we think or do, the results always come out the same... brown and smelly as hell.

I've followed and participated in politics for close to 50 years, and about the only thing I can say about the results of all the billions of dollars wasted on such nonsense is that the results remain brown and have gotten steadily more rotten-smelling. Presentation of the menu dishes has gotten more spectacular, and analytical food reviews surround us to a smothering degree, but the remaining results are putrid.

The solution? Oh, that's a major problem. Politics, like eating for pleasure rather than sustenance, has infected our society. It has become an avocation or vocation for so many of us, that it seems essential. It is like the effort and expense people put into lowering their taxes, even to the point of taking deliberate losses or wasting money. Politics and government is a giant game we play, in which each of us is a loser. We huff and puff about, trying to minimize our losses in a thousand different ways, and congratulating ourselves when others lose more than we do. We compete, even hate, those who might lose less than we do. Politics is naturally divisive, because government takes from all and gives to some, turning each of us into a competitor with all of our neighbors... even those who are far away. We scrap to be among those who receive, and fight to reduce our losses, but the simple truth is that we are all losers, because government doesn't create anything, it only destroys and/or redistributes. It takes and bestows favors. It increasingly concentrates power and demands obedience and even worship. We distrust those in office, regardless of who is there... to an extent greater than almost any other group of people. Voting results switch back and forth in mysterious fashion, but results remain increasingly bad following each "big change".

Very few of us steal from each other, or cause deliberate damage to others in order to gain for ourselves, but government forces us to do precisely that, every day, to people we don't know, and to a great extent every year. We're forced into being competing thieves, who still smile when we meet, because we pretend to not know what we're doing to each other. With our personal hand, we help others, while our "government hand" steals from them. We talk enthusiastically about favoring "programs" that help others, while we blindly ignore the answer to the question ... "At whose expense?"

It is beyond question that the "policies" our government has embraced for many decades have severely polarized us, and widened the gap between "haves" and "have-nots"... exactly the OPPOSITE of what the pushers of such policies have touted when selling those programs to us. They claim to "bring us together" while tearing us apart. Government programs are destructive... without exception... sounding great, helping a few, but harming many and usually harming those who can least afford it.

We're at war with much of the world... hated by many more... with more citizens in prison, than any other nation. Are we proud of ourselves? Most of us are, sort of, because we're getting by financially, and own more stuff than the rest of the world. We've become well-fed slaves to our government, and we don't seem to mind it too much.

Once again, our election choices did not include making government smaller or less intrusive. If anything, the Democratic sweep in 2006 will make the problem worse, but we had to "blame" somebody, didn't we? When will America wake up and realize that government is the problem, not the solution, and that no amount of rehashing of politics will change that? Every year, my fear increases that we will not comprehend that simple fact until our nation collapses around our feet.