What is the future of politics?
No matter what side of the political fence you sit on, these are strange times. Obama was a calm, no drama leader that showed complete respect for the office of the Presidency. He behaved with dignity in every situation. Now we have a leader who functions on chaos. He does not seem to have agenda yet the people around him who have been put in places of power sure do and they are hanging on just to get their own agenda accomplished. We have a President who tells lies, dismisses everyone, tweets nonsense constantly and throws his friends and enemies under the bus. He certainly does not act with dignity and because of this behavior, everyone has taken to the airwaves to insult him and everyone around him. It is a daily public shaming on all sides of the fence.
The thing about this constant insanity is that our children hear it, see it, read about it and have become part of the rhetoric. A friend’s 10-year-old daughter, who is whip-smart and insanely sophisticated for her age, saw Trump’s entourage and screamed out “F-you Trump”. On one hand, I happen to agree with her but on the other hand, I wonder about her generation who is watching politics in a completely different light. Her (and her peers) respect for Government has been diminished and that includes everyone from Senators to Mayors. This mass open chaos has made everyone out to be incompetent. Perhaps they all are.
Kirsten Gillibrand has been saying over and over that if you don’t like what you see, then run for office. Our country is built on a set of checks and balances that are written into our Constitution that is managed (essentially) by our Government. These 10-year-old kids are living in start-up nation and a world where they can watch everything on the phone and be connected all the time. What will their Government look like when they get to the age where they can run for office. Will anyone even want to? Will they have zero respect for Government decisions? Will they be living on Universal income and have Universal healthcare? Will they be living in a time where oil is irrelevant and driverless cars and high-speed rail (including light rail in cities) be the mode of transportation because economically it makes more sense? They don’t care about people’s sexual or religious preferences. They don’t care if you are black, white, Asian, brown or green and they certainly don’t care if you smoke pot. They see a true disconnect between where we are going and a Government hanging on the past.
There is something happening with our President having such lack of respect for his fellow Americans, the office of the Presidency, the United States position in the world and Trump’s inability to truly understand all of these factors that I wonder what Government will look like when our friends 10 year old is 30.
Comments (Archived):
A 10 year old learns that stuff from their parents. One thing I notice about the hard left wing and hard right wing is they don’t at all respect the intelligence of the electorate. They want government to choose for people, not letting people choose for themselves. They also want to insulate people from the consequences of their decisions.It’s pretty clear there is a gigantic split in the Republican Party. There are the big government Republicans, and then there are the libertarians. The fail to repeal Obamacare showed it plainly. They are very different. Trump is no big government Republican but he’s not a libertarian either. He is also very crass. But, that’s where we are in the US.The Democrats scare me more than the Republicans. At least 30-40% of the party is socialist. Socialism only works at the tip of a spear. See Venezuela. Capitalism has risen the standard of living in the US better than any other place on earth. Individual property rights and Coase Theorem work better than anything else.Many of the elites on each side of the aisle don’t really understand middle America. They are wealthy enough to insulate themselves. Money=Freedom for them and many are above the law. If they rub up against the law, they are able to work the system to avoid big consequences-or in many cases pay a lobbyist to get a rule change for them. Small business and middle America can’t do that-and they see it happen all the time now.Many elites see poor people as liabilities to be warehoused, not assets. Instead of figuring out free market ways to enable them, they devise government programs. Those government programs wind up destroying them. People on the left may not like Reagan but when he said the worst words someone can hear is “I am from the government and I am here to help” he was right. Milton Friedman correctly said “if the government was in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years they’d run out of sand.”Much of America is gerrymandered today. That creates extremism in each party because there is less competition. Competition is good. America was founded on the concept of competition. Extremism creates politburos that don’t have to worry about their constituents. They only worry about preserving and expanding power. We need to remember the first phrases of the Bill of Rights that put a dark line between the rights endowed to man, and the rights of government. It’s important to remember the founding documents protect citizens from the tyranny of government. Many governments in the US are tyrannical today.
Brilliantly said. Would you consider a run for pubic office? You have reams to contribute J
but on the other hand, I wonder about her generation who is watching politics in a completely different light. Her (and her peers) respect for Government has been diminished and that includes everyone from Senators to Mayors. This mass open chaos has made everyone out to be incompetent. Perhaps they all are.I agree and this is super super unfortunate. You have all of these young impressionable minds and as I like to say you now unzip their brains and drop something in and it sticks. And it will stick. This has happened before of course but never to this extent. It’s like mass brainwashing. It really is. Where do you think bias comes from? Generally either a direct bad experience or something your parents told you when you were young or something you observed.in the world and Trump’s inability to truly understand all of these factorsIt’s almost an unsolvable equation. I am always ranting about the Chinese and how we are dependent on them. But of course I will take their money no and I will buy their goods.Then I recently found out that Israel benefits greatly from the Chinese and supplies them with weapons technology. I think the assumption during past administrations was that we didn’t have to worry about North Korea since China could keep them in check. What has happened though is that China is merely using the ability to restrain NK as a way to further control us.http://www.newsweek.com/chi…
Kirsten Gillibrand has been saying over and over that if you don’t like what you see, then run for office. Don’t agree with Kirsten and I think that is a really lame way to put it. Would have been better to say ‘if you don’t like what you see then contribute to the candidate that you think will change what you see’.For god’s sake who is able to run for office and why do they have to run for office? Only 1 person can run for office. Having multiple people run for office is not even good because it splits the vote and it splits support and that means that a potential best candidate could loose.This also smacks of what happens when you criticize board members of, say, a condo association. They tend to say ‘ok then why don’t you run and work for the board then?’ The implication is that they aren’t willing to improve or change and they can remain doing a poor job. What if our public servants said this? Don’t like the way cops are? Then become a cop yourself!