Change you can't believe in.

The idea that any one President can change our corrupt system should have been put to bed with President Obama’s “change you can believe in” election.  We all seem to agree that there is rot in our government, but until we are willing to accept the blame for the corruption we will see no change.  This campaign of lies that we have been subjected to is the best proof of the corruption. If you can’t differentiate yourself from your competition on the issues, or justify your position based on facts, you are forced with making your opponent into a horrible person.  Both parties have shown their true faces with the ads they are running with out of context quotes, decades old actions, blame for everything gone wrong in the last 10 years, and downright lies.  It is the folks running these ads that are benefitting from the corruption and because they hold the levers of power, the corruption will continue.  The real corruption is in Congress.  We can only fight this in two ways: refusing to fund any political entity that we can’t directly vote for and asking our Congresspersons to back a constitutional amendment prohibiting funding from those not able to vote in the election.  Change will only come when we eliminate the power of the special interests to influence elections.  We have no right to influence elections in other states, and others don’t have a right to influence our elections.  Let’s keep things local.

Ignorant or Stupid?

The good news about our presidential situation is that rest of the country knows how we got Jessie Ventura as Governor.  The bad news is that we’ve forgotten the difference between ignorance and stupidity.  We are all ignorant about some things and the more complicated our society becomes the more acceptable it is to be ignorant.  In my youth most males could tune up a car and change a tube on a radio and you weren’t considered very smart if you couldn’t.  We are now blissfully ignorant of how either cars or electronics work, and carry no shame for our ignorance.  Ignorance can be defined as the lack of knowledge about a subject.  Stupidity, on the other hand, is the inability to realize that you are ignorant about something.  All stupid people are ignorant, but not all ignorant people are stupid. (logic is foreign to the stupid).  Even though the vast majority of illegal aliens have entered the country legally and overstayed their visa, and even though we have a net outflow of illegal’s currently, the stupid think a wall will somehow solve the immigration problem.  Both China and East Germany have had experiences with walls that didn’t work well, and Israel is currently finding out that walls can’t solve problems.  Because our media and celebrities say a wall will do our country good, people aren’t willing to overcome their ignorance and we continue with our stupid ways. 

John Stuart Mills said that “Not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are conservatives.”  We are now suffering the results of the smart conservatives leaning on the stupid ones to carry them through.  We should have learned that electing a President as a change agent isn’t going to work.  It hasn’t worked well the last 8 years and it certainly isn’t going to work in the next four.  The divide and conquer tactics of our political parties has poisoned our country into a mass of people that automatically reject or accept all ideas as either unpatriotic or a magic solution that will fix everything. Many of us have come to believe that because many politicians are liars, the best politician should be the best liar.

The majority of the current campaign issues may be highly emotional, but affect relatively few people.  Of all the issues of concern to us only two will affect our grandchildren: Global Warming and Campaign Finance Reform.     

Should we really want change in this country, we have to get Congress to represent those in their districts, rather than myriad special interest groups.  As long as campaign money can come from sources other than voters in the campaign, we will have the elites on the campaign finance gravy train keeping everything just as it is.  If this country isn’t great anymore it is because of the hateful ways the elites are keeping in power.  We must change the way we believe and act towards those that disagree with us if we are to unite and prosper.