Early in the year a cocktail of hope and naivete, left me drunk with some expectation of spare time. The season, and campaign, proved me wrong.
Here we are, months later in the fell clutch of circumstance. The title of the blog was right in line with what a lot of that good old American body politic, from every side, seems to think about the state of things, so let's go. I'm going to start sharing my thoughts and notes from the last few months RIGHT NOW.
The way I learned, our government, a federalist republic, was designed at the start to be a two party system. Through tumbles and turns along the way, we’ve all arrived with a certain set of assumptions about what’s republican and democrat. Issues stances, today, are not harmonious. They do not follow the lines of reason. They cause internal discord, settling, and dissonance. Here’s what I think about my own assumed progressive and conservative views, where they are at odds, and where they work together.
First, Special Interests (which, by popular application, is a now a pretty loose term) write laws and create policy. Many of those interests function to create wealth for the few at the expense of most. Some of those special interests also exist to fight the others and protect different sets of people, as a response. One side will always have the advantage, and at the cost of freedom and democracy. Only when both are precluded from wielding their undue political power will we enjoy democracy and a restoration of the state to the hands of the american people. From the campaign to get elected, to how things work inside every legislative body one thing seems certain - that laws don't happen because they're a good idea.
They happen because the most powerful promoting element at the time plows through the process. I've seen people from both sides of the aisle, at many different levels of perceived power toy with this one. Now, billionaires run so much of the show that we're inching just a little bit closer to some kind of fucked up American feudalism every time we pretend that this much money is politics is somehow good. Or, that it's somehow free fucking speech. That's a bastardization of the concept and nowhere near that golden penumbra of the constitution we're meant to laud.
Who's this little guy hitching a ride with, eh? In so many ways, this is about game theory, not political theory - let alone, like, the common good.
