Reply #104: I think looking for heroes among the political class... [View All]

[warren pease]

...is like Diogenes looking for the last honest man -- and finding only knaves and scoundrels.

You can find heroes almost everywhere else -- in academia; in medical research; in fire departments; in theoretical physics; in the ordinary but fed-up peasants and indians who are turning South America into the new cradle of progressive democracy; in the courage of whistle blowers like Coleen Rowley and Sibel Edmonds and Daniel Ellsberg who risk jail time to tell people the truth; in the work of great historians like Howard Zinn who sort all this madness out for us; in the brave foot soldiers of various NGOs who witness, write and speak the truth despite constant personal danger; in the pure hearts of the Buddhist monks murdered and maimed for freedom in Burma; in the hundreds of website proprietors who will not let the truth be purged from the public record.

These people and thousands more are doing the work of heroes, while politicians are doing the work of their sleazy corporate benefactors. Rather than using their power to advance the principles this country was supposedly built on, they spend their time stabbing their constituents in the back every time the peoples' needs conflict with those of their Mandarin employers sitting in the boardrooms and executive suites of our corporate city-states.

War for oil? No problem. Relax air quality standards? Where do I sign? Roll back a century of workers' rights? You know my bank account number. Keep health care private? No problem; the plebes are dumb enough to go for that.

And have you ever noticed that pretty much everything that's good for Wall Street is bad for normal people? Merger, consolidation, massive layoffs? Investors go bug fuck and the stock shoots up 22 percent. Privatization of a formerly public utility? The stock's up 18 percent. Thousands of union jobs shipped to Bangladesh? Stock soars to record heights.

The fundamental disconnect between our "public servants" and our expectations for them lies in corporate money, specifically the amount of groveling they have to do every single day just to secure enough in bribes to be able to run for another term.

I suppose we could always go to public financing of campaigns, but that wouldn't be a free market solution so it's an un-American pinko plot to disenfranchise our patriotic corporations. Whereas bribery is what makes the whole corporate world go round and is the very definition of free market practices. So we go with that.

Anyway, the point of all this -- if there is one -- is never, ever look to politicians for character, moral leadership, courage, conviction or willingness to put their careers on the line for an idea. With very few exceptions -- maybe a couple dozen in the House and far fewer in the Senate -- you're just pissing up a rope.

wp