Facebook comment -> post: Politics
This was actually supposed to be a reply to a Facebook comment thread. I ended up deciding to make it my writing assignment o' the day, partly because I like how it sounds, and also because I'm working on this project that is such a time sink as to preclude me from writing any more today.
The thread so far:
G.G.G.: Thought I'd have some fun on america speaks out.com....here goes my first loony submission and its tortured logic ........The government regulating oil industries is ineffective, they have no expertise in the field, plus the free market is the ultimate regulator here. If anything the government should give the oil comp...anies further tax cuts to make the deep water oil extraction less
Jeff Yen: Well, looks like you're on track to be a Senator soon.
G.G.G.: I think Jack Nicholson said it best in as good as it gets, take away reason and accountability
Jeff Yen: You're on track to becoming a woman?
G.G.G.: a senator, given their reluctance to take a principled stand..on anything other campaign donations
And my response:
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I actually disagree. I think their stand is in fact very principled, just principles of logic and economy as opposed to subjective values of morality and/or ethics. Simply put, they side with whomever benefits them the most.
The fact that they tend to line up with the lobbies and corporations is pretty logical; anyone who says they're going with "the people" are either a) lying, or b) operating on sentiment, which is equally dangerous. A political system shouldn't have to rely on pervasive dopamine imbalances in order to work the way it was meant to.
Take a look at Bhutan, which I see as a fascinating political experiment in progress. All of their current development and gains in what they call GNH are really down to one man, the previous king. Now that he's switched them over to a constitutional monarchy and abdicated, I'm pretty eager to see how that develops. It's not like they're all earthly saints or anything, but they're small and pretty self-contained, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how they're doing after they've been in charge of their own economy for a while.
I think the flaw in our republic, just as with the flaw in any form of communism, is that it is a system springing from the (sentimental) assumption that people operate in a certain way, or should, when everything we've ever done has shown that we do not.
The communist error was assuming people would be willing to work hard for the same money they'd get sleeping at home. I believe any democracy's error is assuming that given a choice between bettering society as a whole and benefiting ourselves -- or alternatively, punishing someone we dislike (which I would actually argue is the same thing) -- we will reliably choose the former.
It's taken longer for the U.S. system to be openly subverted than, say, the USSR, but it remains to be seen whether we'll last longer than the Roman republic (only 248 more years… come on guys, we can do it!). At any rate, I believe the underlying flaw remains: neither ideology sufficiently accounts for human venality. It's just a game to see who can keep a lid on it the longest.
In fact, we might actually owe our longevity as a political entity to the fact that Congressmen spend so much of their time campaigning and molesting their pages instead of working, which keeps them from fucking up the country quite as much.
Ultimately, there's no sufficient metric against which to objectively rate things like ethics or morality, so we can't say with any measure of authority: "Senator, we have observed with some concern that your behaviour is now comprised of 73% douchebaggery, so we're going to take you out back and Taser your genitals for a while."
Some of the more rabidly conservative Republicans would probably quite enjoy that, actually.
But without a system of regulation, and therefore correction, the only other option is to simply frontload the issue: make it more beneficial, on an individual level, for people to behave the way we want them to, rather than less beneficial for people to behave badly, but only if they're caught.
This would require a pretty sweeping set of changes, and our republic is set up partly to stonewall changes as much as possible, so systematic overhauls like that are unlikely to ever happen within the system. This is especially the case given that the general populace are largely non-participants, and the most active participants are exactly the kind you don't want anywhere near the system.
It might be easier if we, say, levied charges of treason against and actually prosecuted Congressmen who subverted our political system for personal gain, but... they themselves would have to pass the law first, and they'd be the ones sitting in judgment of each other.
So much for that.
So really, just like everyone else, I think we'll just get to choose one:
a) Civil war
b) Coup (military, political, or otherwise)
c) Slow peaceful decline, leading to breakup of the union
d) Revolution
e) All of the above
Not that I think this is necessarily a bad thing. The world will change as we know it, and there will be lots of suffering, but the race should learn as a whole, and maybe the next global superpower will be that much better.
Personally I'm kind of hoping for (c).... I think it'd be nice to be a citizen of the Californivegashingtoloradoregonewyorkawaiian empire.
We could even invite Texas along for the ride, if they promised to use our books.