President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

My point is that we're not getting them. Forget the fact that Joe Biden is old and feeble and has certainly lost some mental accuity. Even Joe Biden at his best was a more polished and kinder bullshit artist who does "retail politics" in a way another type of person buys into. ... where he presents himself as compassionate, a Santa Claus. ... who will eradicate your student debt, make health care free, create a gazillion jobs for you (like HE operates factories rather than coercing other people to pay for him inefficiently allocating that money), make sure that people of your skin color are given preference for something. ... etc. etc.

The main reason, in my opinion that we get what we are getting, is that we took ourselves from a society that put a premium on government having a limited role to protect people's basic rights. ... to allowing it to become a corrupt entity that does the exact opposite now. I am not pretending that this didn't exist in the past. It's not like we didn't have the Boss Tweed types hurting the country. But we have allowed it to become entrenched and for our government to usurp more and more of our lives and take over a huge part of our economic lives at the expense of people's individuality and individual rights. People stood by and let it happen.

The bullshit I was talking about is promising people that you will favor the things THEY value. ... which by definition entails violating the rights of people. You coerce others to pay for something that benefits someone else or you take away their free expression to favor the ideals of someone.

That is the game and people are seduced by it (and have made politics into rooting for a sports team based on the rhetoric the teams use).

That's not limited to Donald Trump. ... It's just that Donald Trump is a particularly moronic and despicable individual.

To me, Americans allowed our country to become the kind of corrupt place where our government operates this way -- they are seduced by bullshit promises of someone who gets power through an election stacking the deck in various ways. That draws corrupt people to politics. ... who reconcile the things they do with their own ends, in A LOT of cases by just outright lining their own pockets.

It is not a surprise to me at all that someone like Donald Trump -- not particularly skilled at anything except grifting -- is what is totally possible now.

The answer is not naively thinking that we continue down that path and finding "better people." It's finding a way to undo the Frankenstein and take away elected people's power over our lives. The shit that politics attracts won't rise to the top when they can't get the corrupt things they want out of the endeavor.

The problem is that giant, unaccountable bureaucracies like the ones we have allowed to sprawl on top of our lives get bigger and bigger and take more power. They need to justify their existence and get bigger and powerful. Once you let the camels nose under the tent. ... you get a camel in the tent. That's where we are at -- it's why there is so much discontent. Undoing it is very difficult -- bureaucracies are invested in NOT being undone.

 

You reap what you sow.

FWIW, the reason that Xfinity or Verizon or AT&T are a nightmare to deal with is that the people who demand (and buy) their services by and largely collectively prefer that hassle to paying much more for what Xfinity and Verizon and AT&T sell them. Things have a price and when you pay for things in a world where there are scarce resources. ... people make choices. It's actually the difference between reality and the bullshit that people are seduced by from politicians.

None of that is the case with a politician who is not actually allocating things (and controlling people's choices) based on millions of people "voting" with their behavior. ... what they actually are willing to pay for. They aren't accountable in that direct way. They offer people bullshit that hurts us all at best and violates people's basic rights at worst. ... I will give you stuff and someone else will pay for it.

We get the end result of that. ... misallocated resources, corruption, runaway debt. ... in how it impacts our lives and in the choices we get in the voting booth. The amount of unaccountable power that comes with that attracts complete nothing people and corrupt people and the people who rise to the top in that kind of environment are never going to be the most competent at anything except gladhanding, bullshitting or grifting. It's why we've become what we are.