Do I Belong in Politics?

Recently I had the notion that maybe I could be a public servant. I seem to care about the great degeneration of America. Maybe I could make a difference. I’ve been reading all these books with problems and solutions. I can help!

Second thought: Why would anyone elect someone like me? I don’t have any money. I have a seedy past.

“The modern age makes it harder to be an inspirational leader because so many more of your flaws, or even just your humanness, come under constant and intense scrutiny.”
- from Crisis Point, written by the Senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle

See? Apparently (I was unaware as to what extreme) there are such things as campaign trackers. “It’s someone’s job to follow the opponents’ campaign with a portable device and capture everything the opponent does and says, hoping there’s a sound bite that can be used to attack.” (the Senators) I would ruin all chances of being elected to an important office in the first day of my campaign. I speak my mind, and answer questions truthfully. I don’t think that would work.

Even physics! The Observer Effect — The act of watching a phenomenon changes it. Half the things politicians do or say probably wouldn’t even be done or said if there wasn’t a camera present.

“People came to the floor to talk to each other and now they talk to the stupid cameras”
- Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, longtime senate veteran. (taken from Crisis Point)

I thought Senators were supposed to be debating. I would smile at the camera and then get out of the shot so I could get on with business. That makes sense, but the media has got to make its buck. If you’ve read me before you know my opinion here: the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness has become the pursuit of money, money, and money. Most American evils have come from that new pursuit.

“We have created, and are creating, new institutions distinguished by their isolation and single-mindedness.”
“We have replaced a belief in a nation with a trust in ourselves and our carefully chosen surroundings.”
“Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes.”
“Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes.”
- Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart. (taken from Crisis Point)(I will read this book soon.)

Confirmation bias — looking for that which proves what you already think — seems to be plaguing the public. We have become curators of our own news, our own entertainment — and increasingly our own information. But as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.”-Crisis Point

This is why people can still argue against human-caused climate change.

Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders. Ted Cruz. There are no Moderates left. The nation doesn’t want them. Is Hillary moderate?

I have decided that I don’t belong in politics!

This is all just more of that damn maze.