Hope is great, mostly. It's what leads people to want to fight for change. Normally I can get behind that, but of late there seems to be little reason to think that there can be any real change. Democrats can of course sweep congress, Senate, and White House. Doesn't really fix it much in my view
Why? Because the system as originally envisioned (in the PR releases of the day at least) just seems to me to be hopelessly broken. of late, I've started swearing off politics because of the continuous flood that comes our way regarding the misdoings in Washington. Go below the fold to see why I'm so cynical.
Get used to rank incompetence, corruption, and daylight robbery by the body of elected representatives. Regardless of who the next president is. Even if a perfectly altruistically democratic person were to be president, we'd still get the same behavior. Why? Let me count the reasons:
- the vast majority of politicians lie and mislead any time they're not sleeping
- the vast majority of politicians appear to be beholden to special interests earmarks filth (the Moyers investigative report)
- those that aren't yet beholden aren't far behind, waiting to dig their snouts into the feed-trough
- changing this system needs to be done using politicians (who have the most to lose by said change)
it's small wonder that the few good apples that get into the barrel pretty soon realize as they sink through the sewerage that they can
- fight it altruistically and completely, and lose just as completely
- get with the program and go to some of those fine restaurants
(see Ken Silverstein's Beltway Bacchanal in Harpers (subscription required, but try this for size: between 2005 and 2007, House Members spent $4.5 million at the top ten restaurants in D.C.). Just the tip of the iceberg, and probably also just the start of what corrupts idealists. I've heard the siren-call in private clubs with excellent food and wine in the several cosmopolitan cities around the world, but I hate phonies and cannot keep my yap shut anyway, so I'm still a worker-bee and proud to have my integrity). It does mislead you and at the very least some people think "I don't agree, but I'll keep quiet - this is the sweet-life)
Hope, anyone? GOTV? I think Get on The graVytrain is more like it.
Here's a very simplified view of the powers of the president - feel free to correct me if I'm substantively wrong. I do realize that the sum total of what a president can do is encyclopedic, but bear with me - often the postage-stamp summary cuts through the clutter.
The president in my view is capable of:
- allowing great good to be done (by not vetoing good legislation)
- preventing great harm from being done (by vetoing bad legislation)
No matter who the president, without an overwhelming majority (civics pundits know the numbers) good congresspeople / senators, all is without hope. The archaic classical theories that things tend to level out and self-correct is misguided and applies in reality to only a small subset of natural systems (deep scientific training speaking here). The concept of
"positive feedback" (referring to the self-reinforcing effect of status-quo. (see? I have references - I'm not just making this stuff up). Point is (in my belief) that the badness there has taken such hold that we'll never recover.
The sheer weight of corruption and opportunistic moneygrubbing is, I'm afraid, just too much. I watch CSPAN, read a cross-section of blogs and non-CNN-type news-sites, and have hoped until recently. I read Beltway
Bacchanal and watched the Moyers investigative report on earmarks, and I figure it's a waste of time to hold out hope for change. Keep doing the right thing - sure. Have realistic hope that things will change for the better (short of total implosion before a slow recovery)? Not here.
Bonus link for the technically inclined: the Santa Fe Institute is a real thinktank - there's a more realistic view of science and physics than the kind of drivel that makes people believe that totally-free markets are best, and that trickle-down economics works. Many of the Newtonian perfect equilibrium theories have been dealt the death-blow by these people and others. Enjoy - (real) science doesn't lie like politicians do.