“We get the politiians we deserve.” People say it so often that it’s a bonafide cliche. But when you think about it, how can that possibly be true in a system that is unresponsive to citizens?
We Get the Politicians We Deserve
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Why are you asking us, Ted? We already know the answer. It’s possibly true because it exists in a system that has been unresponsive to citizens.
Yeah, I wasn’t really asking you guys here. You guys know. I know you know.
The dung is: “Why do only corporatist fuck-wad candidates appear on my ballot?”
Below are the latest installments of a site that periodically spells out the vile machinations of “the lesser evil” party to produce only shit candidates for “Dems” whom to vote, in part, by destroying the efforts of many truly good candidates who are never heard from again:
tinyurl.com/jco4co6
tinyurl.com/hddydzq
tinyurl.com/oz43w7d
tinyurl.com/zn4lhpp
Where corporate “personhood” dominates, there is no competitive opposition to the bureaucratic tyranny over humans by the virtual replicants of institutional evolution. The corporate person never dies, it’s just absorbed by other, more powerful corporations. By granting the corporate consciousness “equality,” we have given it the power of G_d over our own, more biological development.
DanD
We DO deserve the politicians we get if the majority can’t recognize that there is a problem.
You can’t solve a problem until you recognize there is a problem.
If we cared about life in this nation as much as we say we do, there would be support for revolutionary action to push the trash off the stage.
We get all riled up about dictators and travesties in other countries, enough to support “wars of aggression” in the name of “wars of liberation” for them—whether they want them or not—but suggest a little revolutionary action here and the majority either won’t find a reason for it, or will call those who do see reasons for it, blankity blank crackpots.
We the People should not try to prove we deserve real elections by whining about the lack of them. The only way to prove you deserve real elections is to demand them and call them out as frauds when they are frauds.
You can’t fix a broken election system from within that broken election system.
Until a majority of Americans understand that, and make sure their politicians understand that they know that, there is no possible basis for anything close to an adequate election system that the crooks in power will proffer to the hoi polloi.
The problem is not with the politicians. They only do what we let them get away with. The problem is with a broken people that have been crawling on their belly for so long that they don’t know how to stand anymore. Except like bullies against even more precarious weaker people.
The American people are like a prize fighters who don’t have what it takes to challenge the champion and so looks for weaker chumps they can beat up.
Crabs in a bucket.
Have a nice election, suckers.
Ah, Glenn, once again you’ve beaten me to the punch.
We need to define “we” in this case. We – collectively all Americans – have allowed this to happen when we did have the power to prevent it. We’ve been kept ignorant and gullible, played for fools – and why not? Collectively we *are* fools.
While I believe it is still *possible* to fix it from within, I certainly wouldn’t bet on it ever happening. Nor do I believe we can get there through revolution, instead there will be sectarian fighting as the system collapses.
Ultimately, that will be a good thing, and clear the way for something better after the inevitable dark ages. I’m just glad I won’t be there to see it happen.
The few that *are* willing to fight in the USA for the USA are right-wing militias, who are demonized by the Left naturally as “domestic terrorists.” How ironic.
What I am sick of is meeting people who fully believe and acknowledge that the system is corrupt yet doublethink that it is still somehow legitimate.
“What I am sick of is meeting people who fully believe and acknowledge that the system is corrupt yet doublethink that it is still somehow legitimate.”
The government gives and the government takes away. Is the government a demon to be defeated or a god to be worshiped? Is the Tenth Amendment a godsend for enabling slave free states or is it the work of the devil for enabling state’s rights Jim Crow?
The government may not allow cattle grazing on public lands out of concern for habitat; then it allows fracking on public lands for the profit of a few and to the detriment of all, up and down the scale.
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/public-lands-are-under-assault-fracking
There must be some relationship to what is allowed based on how much money goes into buying politicians. Do you think?
The inability of people to discriminate between what passes for left and right as misrepresented by the Democratic and Republican parties reflects the unthinking authoritarian mindset of the American public.
Loved that last panel, Ted – thanks !… 😉
Henri