Why I Hate Politics

Basically, politics is not real. Political rhetoric is just another form of advertising.

Here’s a fact, I think, a lot of folks don’t consider. Most politicians are lawyers.  Lawyers are trained to win their case, not to find the truth.  When you listen to politicians, you hear someone trying to “win” for their side.  Politician’s main goal is to win votes.  Sometimes they support programs to win votes inadvertently end up helping society. But their main goal is to promote the party and get themselves elected. I have nothing against lawyers, when they are practicing law. A lawyer should also be an historian, a philosopher, and a sociologist when he/she seeks public office

A large part of lawyer training is the study of rhetoric.  Politicians trained as lawyers use classic rhetorical strategies to persuade or motivate specific groups of voters.  Many of society’s problems are caused when these audiences are unaware they are being rhetorically manipulated.

When two sides are in a political argument, they only state facts that sway opinion towards their side being the “winner” of the argument.  Consequently, important facts that do not support either side are not brought up for consideration by voters. Voters need to do their own research to know all the facts, but most don’t.

The general news media mixes political and factual reports, so it is hard for folks to know the difference.  Most folks depend on the news media for decision making information and for how they will vote.  Since most folks don’t study history or do their own research, they are easily manipulated by the politicians and corporations who feed the media biased information.

Maliciousness and incompetence look the same to the outside observer.  When a politician does wrong the opposition can feed the media whatever version of the event that best supports their side.  The media, being prone to jumping to conclusions, will further confuse what really happened.  The media’s main goal is to acquire and retain their audience.  They will report news events that attract the most attention to do so.  Reporting useful information is secondary as that can be dry and boring.  And many are downright slanted to one political side or the other.  Some are better than others, but the voter needs a good background in civics and history to filter out the bull shit.  Be mindful of news as entertainment.

There’s lots of good elected officials and civil servants that truly want to improve government and society.  The problem is, they face the same challenges as the average voter when trying to pass good legislation or regulations.  They must fight against the “political wind”.  They are forced to play the “If you want me to vote for that, I need you to vote for this” game and all kinds of other politically motivated shenanigans.  This really slows down the whole process.  This reminds me of a quote by Will Rodgers, the singing cowboy from the 1930s.  He would over hear some folks arguing about politics and he’d come up and say, “Just be glad you’re not getting all the government you’re paying for”.

When I’m with a group of friends and someone starts talking politics, I like to play a little trick on them to add some perspective.  I give them a quote by a very famous person and ask them to try to guess that person.  The quote is, “The petty thieves we hang, but the really good ones we elect to public office”.  And, the answer is:

Plato! 

Yes, Plato said this in not those specific words about 2400 years ago talking about one of the first republics on earth.  Yes friends, it’s always been this way.  Today’s news is really nothing new.  Our American forefathers knew this, and the American constitutional federal republic is their attempt to get free capitalism right.  Give the people complete freedom within the bounds of not hurting each other with a government designed to keep greed under control.  Not an easy thing to do.  Give a person a position of power and you increase the likelihood of greed getting the best of them.  It’s just the way of the world. I guess I really don’t hate politics, per say.  I just hate all the lying that many politicians depend on to get votes.  Fact is, they won’t lie so much if fewer folks believed them.  Well, like I said, it’s just the way of the world.