So you want to be a politician
1. When John Tetzel decided to run for Congress against an incumbent
he stopped by to see his old friend Gerry, Gerry Manders.
– If money ain’t what you got, it’s what you need, sport. Plenty of money. How much you got?
- None, I’ve got ideas instead.
- Right, as if those two things equate in importance.
- I’m serious. I’ve got a whole platform, reforms, creative programs for the future. Things I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
- No, no, no, boy, you miss the point. A brilliant idea and six bucks in this town’ll get you a latte and a stale muffinette. You can win without a clue but you can’t run without money. You’ve got to sell yourself, coming and going, to contributors first and foremost, then to the voters. You have to think of yourself not as a mind, not as an American, but as a marketable commodity.
- On what basis. I’m just who I am, a man.
- So what? Now you’re Popeye? Who cares if you am what you am and what you believe in. You’re warm jello, you’ve got to find out what the voters think they want you to be and mold yourself into it. Tell them any old crap they want to hear to get elected, then you can do whatever you choose once you’re in. Demagoguery ain’t just snobbery any more, it’s a lifestyle.
- Oh, I don’t know…I…
- Listen we went to the same old church, you know your liturgical history as well as I do, and you have to think of this like the time honored scheme of selling indulgences. In order to raise capital in this business of politics, which you have to do to be able to compete, you need to sell indulgences of future benefit to the well-heeled, give promissory notes to special interest contributors and provide home delivery of campaign promises to lobbyists and your preferred patrons for cash. You’re an office clerk, an insurance agent for big money. Think about it. Why would a donor pay for a pig in a poke when he can own his own hog sucking on his tit in a pork barrel?
- Is that honest?
- Honest as politics gets nowdays. Break that word down – ho-nest- and turn it around and what do you get? Nothing but a nest of hos. It’s the oldest profession, whatever you call it, politicians or prostitution, same difference now. You get ahold of something someone wants and you sell it to the highest bidder. Today’s politics is capitalism, boy, at its pure undiluted best.
- But aren’t what you are really describing as old as sin, just influence peddling and profiteering at the country’s expense, the antithesis of the free marketplace of ideas? Don’t current campaign abuses merely constitute a corrupt pyramid scheme which encourages people to pay taxes merely to squeeze the life out of the country at large in order to funnel its wealth to a few people at its apex?
- Well yeah, sure I suppose so. But so what? Who else has the influence to sell but those we’ve entrusted it to? Who’d you think was going to do it? Don’t go all Jimmie Stewart on me now, Bub. Don’t go all squeamish. Don’t believe in all this fairy tale democracy they feed you in school. Congress today is a morals pawnshop. Keep your stub if you want and you can redeem your ethics again once you’re on your way out of office.
- But if I sell all these indulgences – peddle my influence in advance just to get elected - when I get to Congress won’t my freedom and effectiveness be essentially curtailed to nothing from the get go? What’s the point of getting the job if I won’t ever be able to do it?
- Bingo. That’s the point of the exercise. That’s what we want. Nobody bribes for surprise. Once you’re bought you stay bought, sonny boy, that’s the rule. Otherwise they’ll find someone else to replace you in a DC minute. Sure as snot in a sneeze.
- Then what good will I be in the job?
- As good as the next and better than the rest. Listen, don’t complain, this job is as sweet as it gets, man, you’re the man in the middle. It pays a nice salary, the work is mindlessly easy, the time you spend at work is actually less than vacation time and though some of your colleagues are jerks the perks are without peer.
- Forget about the jerks and perks, can I live with myself?
- Sure, why not? You’ll be the end toast of every party and fundraiser and junket. The high life awaits. It’s an elitist’s path to an ever growing patrician class. Politicians are the footmen for the new emerging American nobility and overclass. The system has been corrupted perfectly to provide extra help to those who could most afford to help themselves to begin with. Congress is the central administrator to the new upper class realignment.
In other words, politicians have to be rich to run for office to start with and if they aren’t they will soon become rich by massaging their jobs to that end. So as the rich get richer the political class gets richer too, and increasingly the interests of the wealthy become indistinguishable from the politicians’ own. In this way vocation and avocation finally merge and eventually rich politicians who are getting rich wind up working mainly for and with each other to get richer. The hens’ representatives have become foxes eating their own kind. Congress has become the central wheel house of the millionaires club to which every red blooded American fox inclines and aspires.
- But as Congress is the peoples’ only representative in Washington doesn’t its corruption eviscerate democracy’s original intent. I’d like to believe if I went to Washington I could still work for everybody.
- Well, of course you would but you can’t. Those days are long bygone. You need to take the broad view, son. It’s all in the phraseology. Every policy overlaps in its effects if not in its intentions and you may actually sometimes be helping some of these rotten, poor and middle class Americans inadvertently whether you intended it that way or not. There’s nothing we can do about it. Try as they might the wealthy can’t steal it all, yet. So you can say you’re working for the American people generically, even while still working for the special interests exclusively. These are not, speaking in the abstract here, technically, mutually exclusive aims all the time. It just seems to work out that way in practice.
- But does all this really smell as bad as it sounds? Have the interests and considerations of the people really been annihilated from their own democracy?
- Look we all love our country, some just love it more unnaturally than others, they have their needs too, not just to love their country but to make love to it too. Here I’m referring to the kind of love that dare not speak its name, at least not in public or in a court of law.
- In another context I think this kind of love of country would be considered rape and not owning up to it, taking the fifth.
- Well now you’re just being absurdist. You’re confusing physical rape with political rapine. The first is just dirty, a vicious molestation on an individual, the second is just a gradual strangling infringement on a multitude, a little harder to prove. Fortunately there’s no DNA evidence in white silk collar crime yet so even when the public becomes aware of the crimes being done to them, because Congress has written the law to exclude itself from its general oversight and outside jurisdiction, there’s nothing they can do about it.
- But I told myself that if I ever ran for office I would truly work to serve the people and never let myself become just another tool of special interests. I thought Congress was the place where the ideals of the nation would be best personified but you’re telling me that it’s the place where they go to die.
- You’re so naïve and way too full of yourself altogether. Today’s Congress has been reduced to a wonderful mechanical efficiency. Mess with it and it’ll eat you alive. Remember, a member of Congress can never be more than merely the agent of their own campaign contributions, they are just technicians, technocrats and proud plutocrats. Doesn’t a plumber just fix pipes without asking a whole lot of questions about what goes through them? In this business if money demands you do something you must do it or risk banishment to the political wilderness of electoral defeat.
So in public you may say you’ll never be a tool to special interests but who’s kidding whom? Once politicians give themselves over to money as their god they cannot simply back out of the moral abyss into which it continues to pull them. Money’s the most insistent taskmaster. Present day politicians, you see, are just streetwalkers of desire who must always rely on the strange affection and kindness of strange and stranger strangers. In the secrecy and dark of the back rooms, whatever you tell the public, with your hands out, like it or not, you’ll pliantly crawl into the back pocket of anybody who’ll have you and politely ask - do you prefer me to be a hammer, power drill or screwdriver? So let’s get off your high horse here, shall we?
2. - But I’m seriously confused and disappointed at this, I really thought politics was a nobler profession in which I might actually be able to do some good in the world. Can’t I just run without the money? On high principle? I mean I have a personality, a unique soul and bushels of good ideas and you haven’t even asked what principles I stand for. What about all the give and take of democratic debate?
- Doesn’t matter. Don’t care. Intelligence and integrity in office today are as overrated as sex in a snowdrift. See, chief, you’ve got this all turned around backwards. The money doesn’t follow the ideas the ideas follow the money. And politicians don’t have scruples they just crawl along on their bellies and knees after the money wherever it leads. Once the process is all cinched up like this, there’s no waiting vacuum left for good ideas to fill. The dealing is direct cash and carry. The only give and take acknowledged in politics today is that the special interests and lobbyists give and you take. When the money men talk you shut up, put your hand out and listen. Money squeegees all the conscience and consciousness and complications out of it. Have an idea? They’ll either pay you to promote it or bribe you to drop it. It’s not up to you to say. Besides you win either way. Simple. Sweet.
See, man I’m telling you, this is the true and genuine marketplace of ideas. Congress is the true evolution and perfection of democracy, where the free market and democracy become one, to the extinction of the latter. It’s all barter and trade and monopoly, not logic and altruism. As Coolidge said right before the crash, “the business of America is business.” Today he would have simply said “politics is business.” The cash is funneled to the two parties and whichever ideas accumulate the most money behind them, those ideas are your party’s platform and right or wrong soon become your new most firmly held beliefs. Every plank in the platform is bought and paid for just like every line in our tax code. Every piece of legislation must be cleared in advance by the lobbyists who often write the legislation themselves and tie the size of their contribution to the fervor of your pretended adherence to it.
In the process the art of legislation and compromise have nearly been excised from the political lexicon altogether. And you have to support the money that supports you unless you’re in one of those creepy competitive districts we’re trying to stamp out, and are pretending to be other than what you are. But remember it’s money, money’s the crux, the whole, the new almighty God of the politician. It’s the altar you pray at, the master you serve. It’s the cavity where democracy used to be, the hole where freedom was, stuffed with dough.
- But where’s the skill and integrity in this? Doesn’t this make our politicians mindless, cynical automatons, ideologues and sheep and turn Congress into a crass and mindless puppet show? Where’s the accumulated knowledge, history, ideals and efficacy of the nation brought to bear? I have amassed a mountain of experience in life, where will I apply it?
- Well not here, buddy. Dump it whole. Be an empty shell. You may be a sheep, just make sure it’s only the public that’s getting fleeced not your prime contributors. Other than that the overriding rule of thumb is: unless there’s money behind it there’s no merit to it. No one will support any idea just on its own worth. Patriotism that’s not rhetorical is as passé as good jazz today. Nobody has time for childishly idealistic forays that profit no one but the public. There’s just not enough time in the political day.
- But what will happen when the people catch on to this sham? Why haven’t they seen through this already?
- Because of the money, dolt. Man, this is tougher than I thought. You don’t understand anything about modern public service do you? You have to complete the money circle in your mind, man. It’s the hangman’s noose of democracy which leaves the voting public dangling on the gallows wondering what they’ve done to deserve such treatment at the hands of their own employees.
So you see, all the money you take on behalf of special interests to tell you how to vote is the same money you use to propagandize on behalf of the bad propositions you have taken all the money to support. Once the money effectively corrupts the legislative process you can then move on to employ that very same money again to rig your reelection by pricing all comers out of the market to run against you. Thereby you make your reelection unassailable no matter how woefully corrupt your campaign slush fund proves you have been at the job you were hired to do.
See how it works now? Sweet as honey, isn’t it? Never has so much money been given to so few to corrupt a system of government so comprehensively as this. Campaign finance abuse is the bad politician’s best friend. It’s the essence of efficiency, all part of the magic flow of corrupt campaign money that pollutes everything and everyone it touches along the way. First it corrupts the legislative process and then the electoral process. And then once you use your corrupt money to get yourself reelected you immediately start the influence peddling process all over again. As long as this flow of campaign finance corruption remains uninterrupted there’s no influence gap left that’s big enough for the voter to acquire leverage over enough bad members of Congress to pry them out of office in order to institute reform. It’s a perfectly corrupted system which provides its own defense and justification while assuring its own continued corruption.
In the final accounting this money’s far more deadly to democracy than the assassin’s magic bullet in the Kennedy assassination. First it gets the presidents and then it gets the governors and along the way corrupts everyone in between. It’s simple in theory but so comprehensive and devastating in practice that the public has been unable to staunch the corruption it propagates and has left the most corrupt political practitioners in our history unabashedly in charge of all aspects of our government.
3. - What about public opinion?
-Money is more important the popular opinion because popular opinion may be manipulated by money. Meanwhile money is never influenced by popular opinion.
- Then what you’re really telling me is that the more corrupt and subservient I am to the people selling out the country the better chance I’ll have to raise money and succeed at politics? Doesn’t this mean that an incumbent really has more to fear in an election from someone who’s more corrupt than he is than someone who is more honest?
- Precisely. These are the current rules of the game and if you can’t play by the rules as they’re written don’t bother running, dufus.
- Then you don’t disagree? Are you really saying it really pays more to be a bad politician than a good one and to support scam policies that hurt the country more than real policies to help it?
- Absolutely. Good policies just profit the general public and who cares about them? Lip service is all we get for the good salaries we pay them. Real service is what they reserve for their large campaign contributors.
- But doesn’t all this just mean that the worse politician you are, the more back room deals you make, the more cash you raise illicitly, the easier it becomes to obtain office and the harder it is to get rid of you? Or in other words, the less good work you do and the more dishonestly you do it, the better for you and your career. And conversely the better the work you do for the public the worse off you become.
- Proud of you, boy. You’re a little wordy but at least you’ve started to grasp the essence of the process. You’re slow but you may not be dense, just about right, I sense, for high office.
-But this not only takes no talent or independence or legislative creativity but actually punishes the presence of these virtues. This is the perfect antithesis of meritocracy and good government. New Hampshire’s motto is “live free or die”. I think I would rather die than wake up every morning on my knees groveling for campaign contributions. How can people this unfree ever possibly hope to keep a free people free when they live their own lives on their knees like slaves?
- You couldn’t be more mistaken. This does so take special talent. True, it’s the talent of the ingrate and the ingratiating. But the talent comes from looking good and talking well, primarily. Talking well especially. You need to be fluent in doublespeak which is not as easy as it looks or as dumb as it sounds. You need to be able to talk loquaciously and well even in support of proposals or positions which are harmful to the country, in which you fervently disbelieve and which any normal citizen would normally find abhorrent.
Imagine, you have to be elected to do one thing, do exactly the opposite, and get away with it. Tell me there’s not an art to that? Actors play parts neutrally, but politicians fervently act out parts they don’t even agree with without even cracking a smirk. There ought to be a special category of political Oscars and Emmys and Tonys – the whole family - at the political Academy Awards.
- But isn’t this just bad public relations, dishonest advertising and fund raising prowess rather than responsible government, responsive constituent service, legislative competence and personal integrity?
- You say this pejoratively, as if it were a bad thing. It’s a very good thing for the politicians and it’s a great opportunity for any politician that has the stomach for it.
- I already feel the need for a bottle of antacid just listening to you tell of it.
4. -So well then what’s the point? This is depressing. Has democracy just become a façade, the people just a pawn? But doesn’t this mean in effect, if money is the indispensable mother’s milk of elections, that the only way to win an election against an incumbent is to raise more money than they have by proving you will more of a doormat and footwipe than they have already proven to be? And that as long as money is the goal won’t each succeeding generation of politicians have to become more and more indebted to fewer and fewer special interests? And then won’t each generation of politicians limbo lower and lower on the scale of honest integrity and basic legislative capability?
- Ingenious isn’t it? Licentious. Downright diabolical. Never underestimate the depths to which our political class will sink if we turn our backs on them for an instant. The shallowness of these people is already unmeasureable by all comparable governments of our illustrious past. Even the best of them’ll lie down, bend over backwards, roll over and bark and howl at the moon for a bribe the way a dog will for a bone.
For the common political player and hack tell me this isn’t far superior to that democracy mess. If you have taken money or sold indulgences, as per our previous reference, to work for a special interest, it ensures continuity while pretty much negating all necessity of honesty or creativity or debate or hard work or accountability in government. It simplifies the job enormously. It’s an easy gig to just take bribes and do what you’re told, don’t you know? Why do you think the current Congress only works two days a week now and then? It’s because they don’t have anything else to do.
- But you keep harping on the selling of indulgences. Don’t corrupt campaign contribution practices do for democracy what indulgences did for the Church? The practice of politics you are praising betrays the very theory on which our democracy is based in exactly the same way the sale of indulgences run exactly counter to the theology of the Church they were supposed to support. Don’t you remember that it was Luther’s protest of indulgences that led to the Reformation? If its bad policy and cheats democracy of its soul why would anyone be in favor of it since it hurts the country?
- Are you paying attention? It’s for the love of the money not of the country, doughboy. Our politicians have become the bus boys and girls and wait staff of the well to do. So you ask why a politician would be willing to support bad policies? Because it pays them to, of course. They work for the wealthy because they’re the only ones who can afford to hire them. To sell out their own constituents requires good reason, and since they don’t do anything for free, not even dishonest things, you need to make it worth their while. So if a politician provides uncommon service above and beyond to a individual special interest well, doesn’t that deserves an extra special tip, or at least a nice pay off and kick back, in the way of a huge campaign contribution? That’s public service on steroids because then you are really helping some poor corporation or special interest or lobbyist achieve some advantage they never deserved at the expense of the rest of us.
- My head is spinning with this. With all this muck, where are all the muckrakers and whistleblowers?
-Those scum can generally be blackballed and mailed and discredited by the political power brokers operating with great effectiveness behind the scenes.
- But what about the Press? Won’t they uncover this and report it?
- Oh please. Don’t make me laugh. The media is increasingly corporatized, anesthetized, cowed and compromised with tabloidism. You distract the press corps the way you do a baby, with a shiny thing or a rattle or a funny name or a sex scandal and they’re happy and placated for days on end. They don’t cover the fire just the smoke. They dissect the ends of policy rather than research the means and the cause. In campaigns they cover the ads rather than the politicians who put out the ads, which is precisely what we want them to do. They cover where we say we stand rather than where we are standing. The Press is a weather vane which covers the biggest blowhards and sometimes can get right which way the wind is blowing but not whether the way the wind is blowing is actually right or good for the country or not.
5. - OK then what about the American people? What about quality and equality, checks and balances, fairness and honesty, free markets and democracy, equal access, meritocracy and selfless public service? Won’t all these forces operating together somehow right the ship?
- Man you really are a rube, aren’t you? Don’t be so picayune. Quit listening to all those whiny platitudes, they may as well be flying platypuses, for all their relevance to present day political reality. They’re as extinct as the dodo, dead as Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. You got it right earlier. Money’s our mother’s milk and you just can’t afford to be this lachrymose over a little lactose unless you want to be a buffoon and lose your last chance to cash in on the governmental lottery.
- But I used to teach government in high school and this is almost exactly the opposite of how it is supposed to be done. There’s nothing that’s the least bit democratic about any of this. If money is the lubricant over ideas and lies the currency over truth, then democracy’s just a ruse and free elections just a bad joke. This is a system fatally ratcheted against quality and excellence. How could such a jury-rigged system possibly ensure that we would get the best people in office and that they will be accountable for their actions to the people? And what does such a system say about the quality of the people we have there now?
- You pay for what you get. I don’t know what could possibly be more fair than that.
- But I also used to be a high school track coach and even high schools know what fairness is and knew how to set rules and scrupulously adhere to proper procedures to achieve it. First you have to give equal notice and ensure equal access to all comers. Next, you have to have a track with lanes clearly marked, a definite starting time and ending point. And when the race is run you have a fair chance of knowing who was the fastest runner on that day, at that place and at that time. What can be simpler than that?
Yet free elections in a democracy are infinitely more important than a track meet and they seem to be purposely designed to be the least fair in our history. Why can’t we have free and fair elections in democracy?
- That’s so old school. In our new money ridden democracy we don’t bother with all that precious nonsense. We have moved on from such quaint notions of fairness and equitability.
- But that’s insane. I mean, take for example the case of a simple hundred meter dash. Imagine if it were designed by our political class, wouldn’t it look something like this:
First they’d give short notice to applicants and keep changing the venue and rules, to try to keep as many from showing up for the race as possible.
- Shrewd start, so far so good.
- Then any challenger who did show up would have to be penalized at the start to a point twenty yards behind the real starting line. He would be given a narrow wavy lane he had to run in filled with potholes and watered into mud. The race track would be lined with rabid supporters of the other runner throwing rocks and trying to trip the challenger up, screaming and yelling obscenities and raising bogus questions about their character and credentials to intimidate and deter all challengers. And then finally they’d give the incumbent and reigning champion a ninety meter head start in a hundred meter race, use a starting pistol equipped with a silencer only the incumbent could hear and have the finish line rigged with invisible fishing line controlled by bought and paid for buddies of the incumbent prepared to challenge the outcome if there is even the remotest chance their guy will lose.
- Exactly, precisely. It’s really beautiful when you think about it, you know it?
- But what does winning a rigged race prove? Certainly not who was the best candidate for the job, though it may prove a reverse indicator of the corruption of the winner. The astonishing thing when you think about it is that even with all these incredible advantages some of these nitwits incumbents still manage to lose. How has it gotten to be so bad?
- Don’t worry even as we speak the fools are working on making the system even more foolproof. But son, I’m proud of you, now you’re starting to grasp the genius of the system the founders of this country clearly intended. The flaw in our Constitution is that there is no independent election commission to ensure good elections which leaves politicians free to exploit the system to control their own sinecures.
- But elections are meant to be the antidote to bad government. If they aren’t free how can they possibly be fair? And yet it costs acquiring a million dollars of money all with strings attached just to run a competitive and credible race. What is democracy without free and fear elections if not a fraud and illusion?
- Yes. Exactly. Now you’re starting to get it. See it’s almost impossible to win against an incumbent, but once you do, you’re almost impossible to unseat no matter how bad a job you do. It’s a win win.
- A win for who?
- Incumbency. Our political class, of course. Who did you think? Who do think Congress is designed to work for? Congress has redesigned Congress into the national confraternity of back scratchers and hand washers and back stabbers. It’s the grand glorious mutual protection society of politicians by politicians for politicians. Heck, even the courts are so futile and wastrel and politicized against the interests of the people that they’ve ruled that it’s more important to protect corrupt campaign spending than it is free speech. They’ve held that the rights of the electorate to engineer free and fair elections to determine who works for them must be sacrificed to the rights of the politicians to corrupt them.
6. - But can this really be all it takes to run for national office? Obviously selling your soul and the country out for campaign contributions has not only dumbed down Congress but fatally compromised its ethics into betraying the very democracy they so profess to love. This puts the entire future of the country into the hands of the corrupt bribers and shameless propagandists, the shills, the paid political hacks and soulless radio talk show hosts. It doesn’t even ensure a modicum of competence or knowledge in our public officials. No wonder the current government is so little trusted and respected and does such a phenomenally poor job.
- No, that’s not all, that’s just the half of it. There are a thousand muddy little tricks to the game. You can leave nothing to chance with the public. As a general rule nobody of either party says much of a very definitive nature about anything of importance to the country when they can help it. This subjugation of any real, principled debate in the country by the very people we employ to foster it acts like a general anesthetic on the sensibilities of the public and the press.
With that in mind not only do you have to passively support things you know harm the country in politics today, you have to actively promote things you know aren’t true in order to doubly negate the things that are. It’s a subtle misdirection, I know, and smacks of overkill, but vital to comprehend. Therefore, always promote policies which can’t be achieved in favor of beneficial policies that may actually be enacted. To support a thoroughly disingenuous policy is often preferable to promoting an actual policy, because your opponents will have a harder time attacking abstraction than reality. A big lie always beats a small truth and working for short term partisan advantage always is preferable to planning for long term national gain.
To this end remember to always play the negative side of the ledger because it is always better to do to than be done to and to receive than to give. Deficits are politically preferable to surpluses and fear to a general sense of well being. Fear and hate mongering divides the country against itself and by putting people at each others’ throats, deflects attention from your own derelictions and makes both sides more docile and easier for the politicians to control. People only have problems to a specificity. Avoid these like the plague, my man, you only damn specifically in order to propagandize in generalities and vice versa. Unless, of course, you are talking about grandstanding and purely superficial gestures for political theater, which are always OK.
It’s always better to smear than be smeared so always smear first to place you opponents on the defensive which is always perceived as an indefensible position of weakness. It’s harder to refute an allegation that is untrue than deny an allegation that is. Always use words preemptively to misconstrue and misrepresent policies to mystify the public and keep them off balance before a real, true description may arise in order that the truth can never get close enough to the lies to refute them by comparison.
Transparency is as harmful to a political hack as it is to a magician because all denizens of darkness work better out of sight of the light. That’s why governmental secrecy and endemic dishonesty go together as it is vital to be able to spin and spin the public around into a state of perpetual dizziness until they no long know who to trust or in what to believe. Similarly, never bother changing a bad policy or practice when merely changing the words you use to describe it will suffice.
Otherwise, for the working politician today, legislative results are irrelevant for all practical purposes except in campaign speeches where your touching and touched up life story is generously inflated to make you appear more human and humane than you really are. Anecdotes, even fake anecdotes are always a nice touch. Oversimplified slogans are best and more meaningless when overly broad and grandiose.
Remember, even with immigrant parents you can still hate immigrants. Even if you’re gay you can still hate homosexuals and even a philanderer can decry the decaying state of marriage in the country. Pretending to piety is always a no lose approach because even while you’re on your knees pretending to pray you can still beg contributions from those gullible enough to be betrayed. In short, never, ever be caught shrinking from hypocrisy, the more bald faced the better. Trials in life escaped or overcome (and I don’t mean legal trials here either, though some fast footed members can even capitalize on those) are always good fodder for the press.
- What you really mean is, in other words, always lie about everything, of course.
- Bite your tongue with your bicuspids, boy. Lie? No, never, banish that word from your vocabulary. It’s a rule of thumb, a sacred, unwritten, agreed upon principle, that no one accuses anyone else of lying for fear of someday being accused of lying themselves. It’s the golden rule. Lay blame only unto others what thou woulds’t not have them lay blame unto you – or something like that. I know, the workings of politics often seem abstruse to the outsider but see, there are indeed subtle ethical nuances and sinews in politics which still must be observed that are too arcane and highly refined for the general public to understand.
-I think you’ve missed the point of the adage you quoted. I’ve never heard of ethics being used in reference to covering up corruption rather than exposing it or by confusing the public rather than illuminating them.
-No matter. It’s all part of the job. These little tricks of the trade allow everybody to keep going along to get along and when you do have to lie, I mean um, see you’ve got me using that evil word now, I mean support your side with great spirit and gusto, your party right or wrong and all that, you don’t really have to stoop very far to scrape the bottom of the morals barrel because you are already standing there. In today’s politics, precisely because they favor the corrupt over the honest, the winner is usually the one who is willing to stoop lower quicker and play dirtier sooner than his opponent.
The vitally important thing is this, and I can’t emphasize this enough. Always remember, that while anything goes in campaigns, you must never attack the central theory of the political system that depends on corrupt campaign finances to perpetuate itself. That is sacrosanct.
- But politicians argue all the time, half the time over nothing at all. Now you’re saying they’re in cahoots? They don’t ever agree on anything of importance and benefit to the nation do they?
- This is the central key to the scam - game, set and match. Politicians only disagree on petty things like policy and theology and they often manufacture and exaggerate most of these differences and amplify them obsessively to stalemate because that helps them mightily in fundraising. But on truly important things that affect their privileges like their endurance in office, their sinecures, their pay increases, their recesses and vacations, their fund raisings, their junkets, their pork production, their reelections, their self investigatory non-investigations, etc., they manage to generate quite a decree of unanimity broken only by the occasional scandal, critic, troublemaker and pseudo reformer here and there. And believe me those types are soon ostracized from the good old boys and girls club, don’t you know.
7. - But what if the people finally get fed up with the status quo of planned deterioration? I mean doesn’t this system you describe almost guarantee failure and enshrine a self-perpetuating system that literally ensures the nation’s continuing decay and decline. A democracy with a bad system of elections and legislation that prefers bad legislation or do-nothingism over real legislative achievement and is impervious to reform can at best only rise to a level somewhere to the south of permanent mediocrity and at worst stand as a living tribute to mendacity and a working betrayal of everything the country was established to oppose.
- Welcome to the real world, grasshopper. I sense a pejorative creeping into your voice again. Just when I start to be proud of your grasp you start to disappoint me again. So sometimes the public in a rare moment of froth or lucidity gets mad at the corruption of their precious democracy? So friggin’ what? What can they really do about it, you know? The beauty of the moneyopoly is that it’s like inflation, in that the more money infiltrates into the political system the more it cheapens the votes of the public and weakens their control over their own democratic institutions. Naturally some people have unrealistic democratic dreams and don’t really understand how the world really works and it is the job of any politician who wants to keep his or her job to keep disabusing these suckers of their vainglorious expectations of social equality, business ethics, governmental competence and actual democracy. And frankly, up to now I think that has been the greatest achievement of our political class today.
-But what of “you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time?” This system you’re describing to me serves few of the people all the time, sells out most of the people most of the time and doesn’t serve all the people any of the time.
- Exactly, but, I repeat, the beauty of this new political system based entirely on money is that it doesn’t even matter if the people realize they are getting cheated or not. Modern politics is a self-selecting and self-perpetuating system which ensures its own continuity whether the pubic approves of it or not. Because even if they throw one group of bums out, the next one coming in is preordained to be just as bad as the preceding if not worse. Even in a tough election year of unprecedented impotence, corruption and ineffectuality the system guarantees that at least ninety percent of incumbents keep their jobs, and that the ones the others are replaced with will be largely bought and paid for already. So where’s the reform supposed to come from?
The beauty of the process is that it is self-reinforcing. It is embedded in the design of the structure that the self-interests of the politicians will virtually insure that true reform can never take hold. Only those who have already bowed down to the special interests in advance of their running for office can get elected on a consistent basis and they are hardly liable to want to reform the system they are beholden to and is vital to securing their own sinecures in office.
-But wouldn’t it just be easier and, you know, better to actually do the jobs they were hired to do rather than go to all the trouble and dishonesty to erect and maintain this false and phony caricature of pay offs and kick backs in its place.
- Don’t make me laugh. Current politics are no trouble, no trouble at all. It’s democracy when done properly that’s challenging, unrewarding and chancy work. Fair and reasonable legislation under today’s corrupt system is actually the enemy of today’s patrician politicians. It puts you out front of the public. Public spirited legislation usually betrays the special interests which have no real interest in the general public good to begin with other than bending it to their own selfish advantage. The bottom line is always, how will helping the people help your campaign slush fund? Most people in this country aren’t affluent enough to donate to their representative over and above the salary their taxes have already paid for. So screw them. No believe me, it works out to be much more lucrative, much easier and much, much better all the way around for the politicians this way than the other.
- But I still can’t believe the American people will continue to put up with this.
- Don’t make me laugh. Look around, the people have forgotten what democracy is. They don’t care. Every generation has to fight for democracy and reestablish its principles. Use it or loose it. Which of those two options do you see the public embracing today in this supine, spoiled, stultified society which seldom even bothers to vote, much less read the news and pay attention as their rights are being gradually sold off, stolen or eroded day by day? Does this look a revolutionary society that will aggressively fight for their rights to you? They’re too mesmerized by TV which plays into the hands of the political class ability to manipulate and propagandize and sedate them to inertia.
No forget your idealism and dreams. Just lie back like the rest of us and enjoy the decline. Now it’s every man for him and herself, man. May as well just get yours while you can. The American people have spoken with their silence. They are too greedy and prejudiced today to deal with the complexities and necessaries of democracy. They’d just as soon take their chances with a bribe ridden system which may allow their side some brief political primogeniture over the rest of society which will enables them to cheat or preach down to their neighbor before their neighbor can cheat them first. They’re banking that their wealthy interests can out bribe the other side’s wealthy interests for the future of the country, but I wouldn’t count on it. Neither side can win at this lottery and auction of America. This is how our shrewd politicians use their divide and conquer stratagems to enervate society, render the political system impervious to reform and turn the people away from their own best interests.
But, make no mistake about it, only the politicians and their handlers will prevail in this struggle. The political class is the only winner here. It’s an amazing story, how in an incredible alchemy the political class has successfully turned public service away from the public good and into private profits. The system of checks and balances has been subverted to one of cheques, credit cards, debts and imbalances with barely a whimper from the public in protest.
So in summation, in answer to your question, yes, by all means run for office. Better with them than against them, I’d say. I really couldn’t recommend a life in politics to you more highly. It’s a cast iron, gold plated money maker for you.
- Problem is, in closing my heart and mind to the effects of my actions, I’m afraid I’d lose my American soul in the process.
- Don’t worry. I know some people who are always on the lookout for compliant fellows like you, go along to get along to get ahead types. They’ll do right by you. As for that soul thing, I hear you can get a new one on EBay cut rate. They seem to be going cheaper by the day in this country.
