Political Spectators Hand Power To Those Who Deserve It Least

Everyone in the great sea of political professionals is depending on one key thing – that they can sway huge masses of people in whatever way they want because all those people are simply spectators, not participants in the political process. All the spectators are asked to do is vote every couple of years. Period.

Politicians do not want the voters to be activists. That would be diametrically against their interests. There may be active people trying to get people to interact with their neighbors and various government agencies, but these are not professional politicians.

These are people easily branded as troublemakers. Join them.

They are exactly what government needs right now – lots of pains in government’s derrière.

Oh, but there is just no time to be involved! Hogwash!

It’s the common excuse: Today people have so very little time to devote to anything other than their own job and their self improvement, they have no time to get into all that business of government and bureaucracy and endless hours arguing with politicians or struggling with political issues; my God, how could a busy individual ever find time to dabble in politics; really. Marvelous self-forgiveness there! And just as any professional politician might phrase it: Leave it to the professionals.

But there’s the problem: America has no provisions for a corps of professional politicians. Lord knows there have been men and women trying to make themselves professionals in the world of politics. Some are crooks looking for an easy buck. Some are men and women pure of heart, hoping to save the world. It does not really matter what makes these people into lifelong political officials, always seeking votes. What matters more is that all of these politicians must – sooner or later – get stale, or lazy, or run out of ideas, or become corrupt, or criminal, or a combination of the above. Why?

Because they were supposed to stay in office for a couple of terms and then leave so another person could get elected. Oh, some will say, this political world (city, county, state or nation) is just too complicated to turn it over to a rookie. To succeed, those people say, the voters have to elect the same knowledgeable old veteran. He or she has seniority, committee chairmanships, and powerful friends. So let these seasoned pros handle everything.

But these are qualifications that the politicians dreamed up to keep themselves in office. Chairmanships, seniority and the like are not God given privileges, they are the tricks that incumbents turned to in order to again become incumbents.

Plain people think of politics as convoluted, labyrinthine, mysterious and, practically speaking for those plain people, way too complicated to even begin to fathom. Guess who makes these political issues so impossible – right, it is the forever-incumbent officials who wrap every issue in so much jargon, doubletalk and half-baked truths as to make the issue impossible to figure out. Of course it is all mesmerizing, that’s the goal..

Any time the people surrender their willing disbelief to the hands of the magician(s), they will stay in the politicians’ hands indefinitely. Because the people are strictly spectators, they are trapped. Of course the ultimate befuddler is a War.

Wars give politicians the power to make whole swaths of information forbidden to the average person, the average citizen. Naturally, politicians will tell the people to leave everything to them, the professionals, whose job it then is to save all of the ignorant people from the unthinkable acts that the enemy is using against all Americans everywhere. This state of mind, coupled with restricted information, can actually raise the politician to the level of a near god; knowing all about the enemy and keeping it to himself or herself; protecting the weak citizens, etc., etc.

If the politicians need to trim back on the citizens’ rights, well, they ought to do so because, after all, they know everything and the citizens do not. Better to sacrifice a few freedoms to keep the citizens of the United States secure than run any risk.

But once that happens, Americans have lost. They have lost their freedoms. They have lost their independence. They have lost their identity. They have lost the war. There is no America. Not when professional politicians dupe everyday citizens with towering lies, and employ religion to overpower resistance to government. It is a spiral, where there are secrets about secrets, ignorance of truth even though it is as plain as day.

Never should America suspend its willing disbelief. Never should Americans become spectators of their own government. Governing is everybody’s business.

Make time.