The Government We Deserve

There’s no reason for government to change (and I mean change fundamentally – not incrementally) if all we’re going to do is applaud mediocrity for the sake of seniority.   We can blame Bush all we want, but we can should also call Congress to account for being MIA.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the work of Ralph W. Emerson.  I first read his essays in college and I was either too young or too tired to appreciate the sentiments. (I was working and married with 2 babies when I graduated) He wrote these words better than a hundred and fifty years ago. You will find that there is very little that’s new under the 1844 sun; this is from Emerson’s essay On Politics.  

“Parties are also founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders.”    

 Those “better guides” are where the average woman or man comes in.  Everyone should get uncomfortable when we see comments like “low information” Dem as though he/she weren’t as (sniff, sniff) enlightened as the rest of us beautiful people. The last time I checked, these people were still Democrats, and we should be finding a way to reach them instead of alienating them with labels.  We have a significant number of people in this party who are working too freaking hard to put food on the table to do more than click through a few news channels before falling into bed.  This is  not going to change, so we either find a way to communicate with them…or we lose them.  I’ve been to our local Democratic Committee meetings and you could hold them in a phone booth or two.  There’s a schism in the party and I think this is part of it.        

“We might as wisely reprove the east wing, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.  Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and, obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging to their system.  A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.  Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders.  They reap the rewards of docility and zeal of the masses which they direct.

 “They reap the rewards of docility and zeal of the masses which they direct.”  Indeed.  Imagine if we actually called our elected officials to account for the corporate hijacking of our government?  And even our activists are both docile and zealous enough to do the bidding of people who have had decades to change the system. Complacency is killing our government.

“The vice of our leading parties in this country (which may be cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion) is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth.

Call me naive or an idealist, – but I don’t think many of our elected officials distinguish themselves by actually working for the common good.   We have plenty of bad policy masquerading as compromise that serves the public good on a very sparse scale. (Medicaid Part D, anyone?) But note the self-dealing when it comes to their own pensions and healthcare plans.  Yeah.  

I am tired of re-electing the same people, over and over again, and not seeing real gains in terms of the common good.  I am very open to giving someone else a chance to see if they can do the job any better.  Even if they are a voice in the wilderness – let there be such a voice, because right now, there is very little transparency in lawmaking or regard for the “masses.”  

“From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.”

We need to expect more of our elected leaders and ourselves. We should be demanding excellence instead of accepting mediocrity and calling it excellence for the sake of seniority in Congress.   The people deserve better.    

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