I Question My Government
The American form of democracy is a deeply flawed form of government. It forces us to choose between a tiny number of candidates, which often enough comes down to choosing between the lesser of 2 evils - or, like in the recent election, a choice between an overt not-quite-evil-but-still-a-total-narcissist and a covert evil. It's an utterly binary, polarized system that tricks everyone into focusing all of their efforts on the fight between red and blue, while ignoring all of the deeper issues.
It's a system that, by its nature, engenders hypocrisy and facade at the highest level by trying to force checks and balances onto our leaders. The kinds of people who rise to power in our system are the kinds of people to whom checks and balances are anathema - because the kinds of people who rise to power beyond a certain point will always be the kinds of people who desire power. Checks and balances are the opposite of power - that's the whole point of them. So of course our leaders hate them. How could they not? But our leaders can't openly defy those checks and balances - they have to be seen as loving and supporting the system, not trying to get around it. So inevitably they weave a facade - saying all of the right things to the voters out of one side of their mouths, while gathering all the power they can out of the other side. That metaphor was kind of broken, but you get the idea.
I could go on and on about how the only people our national leaders interact with are the other political people in Washington, which inevitably creates a mile-wide disconnect between them and the real world, but that's actually not the point I'm meandering toward with this story. The point I'm trying to make is this: The American system of democracy is a deeply flawed, corrupt, hypocritical nightmare. The only thing that's worse than the American system of democracy is pretty much every other form of government.
Naive, idealistic people get this idea in their heads that just because something isn't perfect, that they should fight against it. That they should try to replace it with something else. But the truth is that government is inevitable, anarchy cannot exist, *shouldn't* exist - and so therefore we have to live under some sort of governmental system.
American Democracy was born in the hearts and minds of people who had just seen their friends suffer and die in a war against a monarch's dream of empire. They had seen firsthand the destructiveness of too much power concentrated on too few people. They had seen exactly how dangerous government can be. So when they forged our system of government, they did something that is largely unique in the whole of human history - they forged a system of power specifically designed to limit power. To diffuse it as widely as possible, among as many people as possible. Human nature, and the nature of power, have corrupted that system over the centuries. Fear of communism gave the president the power to unilaterally declare war. Fear of terrorism has begun to destroy the ideal of innocent until proven guilty. The power to weave war against others, spy on ourselves, and imprison anyone within our borders, has become concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, with less and less people to stand against them if they use it destructively.
Our system is deeply broken - but so is every other system. And unlike most - ours does its best to keep in check the worst impulses of our human nature. Our system is broken *despite* how it's set up, not because of it.
It's a system that, by its nature, engenders hypocrisy and facade at the highest level by trying to force checks and balances onto our leaders. The kinds of people who rise to power in our system are the kinds of people to whom checks and balances are anathema - because the kinds of people who rise to power beyond a certain point will always be the kinds of people who desire power. Checks and balances are the opposite of power - that's the whole point of them. So of course our leaders hate them. How could they not? But our leaders can't openly defy those checks and balances - they have to be seen as loving and supporting the system, not trying to get around it. So inevitably they weave a facade - saying all of the right things to the voters out of one side of their mouths, while gathering all the power they can out of the other side. That metaphor was kind of broken, but you get the idea.
I could go on and on about how the only people our national leaders interact with are the other political people in Washington, which inevitably creates a mile-wide disconnect between them and the real world, but that's actually not the point I'm meandering toward with this story. The point I'm trying to make is this: The American system of democracy is a deeply flawed, corrupt, hypocritical nightmare. The only thing that's worse than the American system of democracy is pretty much every other form of government.
Naive, idealistic people get this idea in their heads that just because something isn't perfect, that they should fight against it. That they should try to replace it with something else. But the truth is that government is inevitable, anarchy cannot exist, *shouldn't* exist - and so therefore we have to live under some sort of governmental system.
American Democracy was born in the hearts and minds of people who had just seen their friends suffer and die in a war against a monarch's dream of empire. They had seen firsthand the destructiveness of too much power concentrated on too few people. They had seen exactly how dangerous government can be. So when they forged our system of government, they did something that is largely unique in the whole of human history - they forged a system of power specifically designed to limit power. To diffuse it as widely as possible, among as many people as possible. Human nature, and the nature of power, have corrupted that system over the centuries. Fear of communism gave the president the power to unilaterally declare war. Fear of terrorism has begun to destroy the ideal of innocent until proven guilty. The power to weave war against others, spy on ourselves, and imprison anyone within our borders, has become concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, with less and less people to stand against them if they use it destructively.
Our system is deeply broken - but so is every other system. And unlike most - ours does its best to keep in check the worst impulses of our human nature. Our system is broken *despite* how it's set up, not because of it.
