I suppose I am like most people these days, getting less and less impressed by politicians. Maybe it is just that we have more channels of information, seeing them from more angles, but don't they seem to get dumber and dumber? It can be they are just more corrupt and dishonest than previous generations, but I honestly find them for the overwhelming part just not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Maybe the majority of them has always been sockpuppets, but they do seem dumber. Now, being a politician is not easy, you have to make all sorts of compromises, reality makes all sorts of problems for promises and plans. Things are also complicated by the fact that politicians in many cases are not loyal to the level or zone where they get vote and tax money, it is to somewhere else. I still think parliamentary democracy is the best form, but it needs refreshing (Hey, what naive optimistic twat writes on this blog??). I do not long for old-style monarchy nor technocracy (which EU is a project of).
I like the drastic Barnhardt axiom:
The fact that a given person is holding or seeking high-level public office is, in and of itself, proof that said person is morally and/or psychologically UNFIT to hold public office.
I might not be there, but it made me laugh, when I first heard it today. It reminds me in an inverted way of the classic Groucho Marx line: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”
Even if I am naively, if feebly, hoping for refreshed democracy, I do not vote for the least bad. Nor would I hold my nose and vote for the lesser douchebag in a two way race. That is just theatre. Blue or red, "left" or "right". Not voting is always an option. Non-voters CAN complain, as George Carlin put it nicely. He was a principled no-voter.
That's all, folks!
ps. Obama quite often used "folks", which sounded a bit concorted coming from him. If he can, I surely can.
I wish I had a solution, but I do not. Hah, what a quote.
But you are spot on; They do appear dumber, or maybe they think we are dumber? The people? So they see no reason to raise the bar, and instead speak even more “down”. I hope for a big change one day. Better soon!
“I don’t think we should go to the moon…I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.”
– Ron Paul
That was a funny quote. 🙂
The talking down has maybe not increased (if that is even measurable in any sense), it is just that we hear more opinions these days? There is much complaints about people being divided up in their own separate realities/dimensions/groups, e.g. on the web, but before the Internet, most people read one and the same newspaper year in and year out, getting the same perspective served every breakfast. State media (radio, tv) had a bigger grip, but that has diminished, which I think is a good thing. They were never as objective and non-partisan as they claimed.