[This was a comment to a post on Google+, but I'm x-posting here on my blog so everyone can see it. My language gets a little rough towards the end, and it's long, but please read it and share it. If you're looking for a TL;DR, read the bold stuff.]
I have lost faith in the government. Perhaps the time for a representative law-making body, currently constructed, is over. Yes, we are supposed to elect people who 'know better' than us to make the decisions on running the country, but in my opinion they have failed. Miserably. And look who is even running, let along elected: an abundance of millionaires, old white men, and people playing off the emotions of their constituents to get into the biggest money-making racket ever.
Here's a challenge: I make less than $20k a year, every year (translated: I am a wage slave). Can anyone name an elected (hell, even appointed) official currently serving in the House, the Senate, or the White House who is in my income tax range? How far back do you have to go? How can someone who made over $100k after taxes (which they more than likely loopholed themselves out of paying any normal amount), who hasn't worked for a wage either ever or since they were 16, who hasn't lived in a condemned apartment building because the rent there was the cheapest even begin to believe that he or she represents my interests?
How much money does it take to have a chance in any election above the local (city, county) level? It's become a money game, pure and simple. More money means more votes. Those with money prop up others with money. This is how the income gap increases. Well, that and not raising wage levels commensurate with the inflation level, so the poor and middle class get poorer. Everyone sitting on Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania is moneyed; either old or new, it doesn't matter, and to be there and to be moneyed means to have taken money from someone for something--be it a vote, a stance, an abstention, or whatever at some point along the road. The system is as dirty as it can be without directly throwing out the constitution and establishing a plutocracy in name (because the deed is already extant).
And yet we still pin our hopes on one man to get the job done. It was Barack Obama in 2008, and for 2012 it looks like many are looking toward Ron Paul. Yet the only one man who could affect any real change would have to strong-arm the other two branches of government into bending to his will, but even in a dictatorial-coup-from-the-inside situation there is no guarantee that the system will be cleansed and purged in a way that benefits the people.
Instead of on one man, we must put our hope in ourselves, which translates into action. I'm not talking about the joke of voting, which we "get" to do once every 2, 4, and 6 years for our officials. I'm talking about rising up, speaking out, and taking the power back. Back from the rich, back from corporations and banks turned people (the biggest fuck you to the people ever!), back from those might-as-well-be-anonymous politicians who legislate with their wallets and their party lines rather than the will of the people who they are supposed to represent, back from foreign investors and governments and international organizations bleeding the world dry, back from any who would not willingly give it up.
Representative democracy fails when the representatives elected by the people no longer represent the people. The republic is dead, the United States is dead--or at least in its final death throws. And what are we doing about it? Hoping that one man can magically heal the country? Or just keep it on life support for long enough to find a better solution? Me, I'm for a resurrection. Let the fucker die; hell, I'll even gladly help put the mercy bullet in its head, then let's restore it to glory, to its basics: power for and by the people.
One man will not be able to change a thing, except to make things worse, to prolong the suffering, maybe to put a bandaid on the hole where the heart of the American system used to be but is not bleeding profusely and gangrenous.
We need 537 new men (and women, too) in office selected by the people by their merits to replace the 537 currently in power. We need an extermination of the entire lobbyist system. We need to turn corporations back into things, inhuman, neutered things. We need to regulate Wall Street and keep it the hell out of government. We need to listen to the people, empower the people, and have the people rule.
1 comments: on "Me and My Politics: Enter the Revolution"
Move to Canada. You'll like it up here.
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