Why Our Democracy Requires More Independents
Share by AL FABRIZIO
Today at 6:38am
By its nature, politics requires of it's participants, that they return favors granted to them by their donors and by the core constituency that support them. In general, both of these groups have agendas which are, in general, at odds with good sense and pragmatic decision making. Generally speaking, the former may be driven by profit motive and, along with the core constituency may also be driven by strong emotive identification with favored ideas or issues. Because many of these ideas are ideological, as opposed to pragmatic in nature, and are often, by necessity, oversimplifications ready for digest ion by a mass audience, their value can be highly suspect. As a consequence, when forced to choose from among a number of solutions to problems, the best and wisest solutions may not satisfy the demands of these influencers. The best ideas will be crowded out by the passion of the crowd and the influence of money. For these reasons, there is a lot of bad policy that becomes law. If individuals would declare neutrality of affiliation and refuse to be swayed by partisan bickering and the oversimplification, and dramatization that is needed to move mass audiences, the outlets that deliver our news would be forced to deliver a more fact-based reporting. The partisan hackery that now governs news and information delivery would diminish and our elected leaders would realize they are under scrutiny to deliver results. Gerrymandering, media manipulation and crony politics would cease to be an effective means of playing the electorate.
Darrin response:
I think you could only add more by using real life examples where decisions have been made that illustrate this point. And how so few of our major problems in this country are actually being solved. Unfortunately all the major issues are not fixed as much as they are addressed under the guise of paybacks.
This could make for an interesting longer piece with that included. I often imagine if the house and senate got together as just Americans to solve the problems of the day. Instead they constantly enter the chambers with the shackles of their donors around their necks.
