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.
Monday, October 31, 2016
Thursday, October 13, 2016
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)