The Real Politics

The root of democratic and just power should be a basis of coexisting trust between authority and population, for it is with the consent of the People that the government is given power. It derives its authority from the trust placed in its continued protections by the People, and it is with the People’s will that it should tread. The trouble with an authoritarian system, however- built on politics and bureaucratic principles- is that it becomes instead of a beneficial and progressive system for the betterment of the governed and for man as a whole, rather a tool for the deception of the constituency in order to maintain the shell of a dominion. 

The bipartisan nature of the American democracy, therefore, can be more likened to a theatrical production than to a factory. Where the part of the pol should be to work policy and legislation in order to provide for the People, it has become instead a caricature of reality, where outliers push a radical agenda in order to maintain the spotlight, stir up public involvement through controversy, and play a ceaseless game of tug-of-war. Without the back and forth of otherwise fairly congruent ideologies, you’d be left with something flat and ultimately more productive, which is counter to the whole point of a career politician’s existence: to get re-elected. To this end, attempts at refinement, automation, and overall improved efficiency are tossed to the wayside as ignorant musings on how to do away with the very scripted and self-created drama which pads out a political resume. Rather than an otherwise well-oiled machine churning through issues and chugging out law reform, you get actors placed in a congressional or senatorial lime-light to put on a show before the audience of the People. Where filibusters are scheduled affairs, and shut-downs and continuing resolutions become more and more common place. 

The indecisiveness of our leadership is only outmatched by its deceitfulness. The real power-plays happen outside the public eye, in social gatherings and friendly play; the sort of events where lobbyists are just formal gentleman having fun with an unspoken agenda and a promise of campaign backings. Where bribery is a birthday present unrelated to the industrial policy that would just so happen to be up for a subcommittee vote, with a wink and a nudge and a palpable tension to the air. Votes are not bought, then, they’re secretly auctioned hidden inside of other trinkets There are few back-room deals in the dark, or shady encounters in dark alleyways. Rather, these things are done out in the broad daylight- in parties and golf outings- at the events of the aristocratic. . The expectations remaining that a politician could possibly remain impartial to the torrents of money being tossed at them in order to maintain the tenure of the incumbency become fanciful at best and ignorant at worst.

Herein lies one of the fundamental paradoxes of our democracy; we seek a system that is fair and just for the common man from people who are far from common. True, some argument could be made on the behalf of this system such that the complexity of the current system lends itself to graduates of Harvard and Oxford and not to the common man; to multi-millionaires and corporate tycoons who's experience would potentially outweigh the ambiguity of their moral fibre.  There again, though, the system is a creation of its own design, with intricacies not necessarily tailored from its inception, nor necessarily intended upon its foundation. How many of those complications are intrinsic to the very idea of governing, and how many are the children of politics is something far less definite. Either way, we have allowed ourselves to be taken and ruled by an upper echelon of people whose representation of the true desires of the People is up for debate. 

At the highest reaches of our federal regulations, the question must be posed whether the vision of the decision makers encompasses the interests of the general public, or only those of the corporations and voting blocks who have their ear. Are the policies put in place made for the benefit of the People, or for the benefit of the few whose efficacy is high enough to take the time to vote or to send contributions to campaigns. Are the pols really working for the People, or for themselves. Are they driven by altruism, or the lining of their own pockets?