On politics and politicians
I have never been fond of professional polititicans, believing that if someone in this day and age aspires to hold office they are by their nature too power hungry to be trusted. Power corrupts…as the saying goes. But that same saying points out that ABSOLUTE POWER corrupts absolutely.
I realized that in a world that works, politicians are like musicians in an orchestra. That while each holds an instrument of government, no one governs absolutely. I realized that politicians are not inherently evil. In fact, politics is the art of diplomacy. It is not supposed to be served by selfish people. That the problem is instead in the way that the public has denied legitimacy to politicians and that our very anger at how power has been mishandled has deteriorated the legitimacy of politics and those who practice it.
This is one of the many things that I have learned by watching Trump. One of the most common things I remember hearing at the beginning of his presidency was relief over how we now were led by *one of us*. One of us meaning *not a professional politician*. Obviously D.T. is rarer than most politicians and also much less one of us than most people. He is a billionaire many times over. Power is something that he is used to leveraging with money. So instead of being led by someone who believes that people need to be pursuaded and massaged and convinced and misled, we had a leader who believed one thing. He believed in money. Thats all.
Politicians in an ideal world do not believe in money and power. They believe that the art of diplomacy uses money and power to further the greater good. A true politician serves the people. They are interested in furthering civilization. Not in their own place in the spotlight alone. Obviously this is an ideal. However I realized that many of us Americans and perhaps many all over the world have lost track of this.
We need to start respecting politics again. We need to start discussing things like how we as human beings should be treating each other. We need to accept that a governing entity is created by US. That WE abdicated our power. WE are the ones who let ourselves down. This is a country that was based on the idea that everyone has the freedom to speak about anything. That is a responsibility as well as a right. The responsibility is to engage ourselves with our government. we need to rediscover a respect for government.
A respect of government does not mean an ACCEPTANCE of the corruption in the existing system. A respect of government means we need to take a more active role in our own society. It means we need to start honoring the concept of what a politician is. what they should do. and we should do this by respecting that like any other profession politicians are trained to do it. We should insist with our votes and our words that we wish to have team players in government. Politicians have turned into a caricature of themselves. Instead of focusing on furthering and nurturing civilization and protecting the people in our own country it seems that they are most visible on campaign ads ripping apart their opponent.
We are training our politicians to be gladiators instead of statesmen.
We have to stop. We have to stop sponsoring and confusing professional wrestling with professional politics.
We as a nation have come dangerously close to seeing what a dictatorship could be like. We are lucky that we have such a strong and flexible system. As flawed as it is, we did not end up with a dictator taking over. But that was something I had never thought possible in this country before. And now, I have seen how it could be.
Before its too late, I ask my fellow americans to take a moment to seriously think about what they want out of their government. And I am going to start writing and thinking more about what i want out of mine.
