Monday, June 17, 2019 9:47 PM
I Vote Maybe (2019Jun17)
Our governments wait until things go wrong, then, argue over what to do. I’d like a lot less telling me what I’m not cleared to know—and a lot more telling me what the hell they’re doing to earn their salaries and, more importantly, my vote.
How come I’m in my sixties and my government is still without any solutions for any number of problems which presented themselves when I was a young schoolboy, decades ago? That’s not government—that’s a protection racket.
I hear reports of studies showing that our government responds not to voters, but to lobbyists and contributors (as if you can find daylight between those two things). This seems to have evinced no shame, nor reaction of any kind, from elected officials.
This disconnect between our vote and our influence is as disabling as a lack of democracy itself. Elections cannot be PR battles, with one side fighting truth with lies—or, worse yet, both sides inventing their realities.
Elections have to go back to policy promises, and whether or not they are kept. Otherwise, we can just skip the popularity contest and let the fat cats have their way—that philosophy has been marching us all toward perdition since the 1980s. Why stop now?
Can we really be in the 21st century, when humanity is in danger of global habitat collapse, just from our peace-time activities, and we have a crazed con-man for president—and he thinks the world is still small enough to take an extra war or two. When do I wake up? Is all mankind’s genius to be laid in the laps of drooling troglodytes?