Allegiance

 

            There’s a lot of healthy cynicism out there about our political leaders.  I’m proud to be a part of it, because it’s cynicism well-placed.  I overheard plenty of people in the past election relaying thoughts such as, “Looks like a contest between tweedledee and tweedledum this year.  Yup.”  Self-proclaimed realists that they are, they went ahead and voted for them anyway, but at least they understood that what they were voting for were fetid feces of assorted rodent species.  Hey, that rhymes.

            We should all have that universal wisdom locked firmly in place.  It’s easy to have when one realizes that people excel in politics because they are skilled at the art of securing and maintaining power.  It’s their job, their course of study, their lifelong ambition.  They undoubtedly have other reasons for being in that profession, but those are merely peripheral without the central drive that involves governing and popularity.  They are participants in what is arguably the largest system of organized bribery ever to exist.  So they’ve got priorities, and doing the work of constituents is seldom paramount to political self-preservation.

            I’ll be fair and admit that it’s a sweeping generalization, and I know that people vote more in line with the tenets of their personal belief system than with any given person’s winning smile or shining personality.  Anyone who doesn’t is really, really confused or just doesn’t care.

But the expectation of an average politician to be prudent and wise, or to have interpersonal ethics, or to have a genuine, believable honesty is pretty much a joke.  And we do talk about it consistently on our talk shows, often using the skeptical term “spin,” which just proves that even our greatest political analysts don’t trust the subjects they analyze any further than Mini-Me could throw a Winnebago.

            Why then, knowing all this, do so many of us still allow our truths to be so incredibly skewed by our party affiliations that we automatically attack or defend our individual leaders with blatant disregard for the painfully obvious?

            Former President Clinton so obviously broke the law by lying under oath about his tempestuous love affair with a government clerk, but there were so many Democrats who flocked to his side in throngs to protect him against the charges.  Why?  Is Clinton really that much of an incredible human being to warrant such a defense?  He embarrassed the Democratic Party, for crissakes.  But instead of condemning him, most of his Democrat brethren expressed their blind allegiance to him by embarrassing themselves alongside him.  And at the following State of the Union address, they gave him standing ovations every twenty seconds.

            Let’s face it, President Bush is not an articulate, intellectual heavyweight.  You don’t have to watch him for more than a minute to see the incredibly obvious shortcomings of his communication skills.  How he ever made it this far in politics is mind-boggling, but again – it probably has much to do with this weird phenomenon of partisan garrisoning which has defended his personality and exaggerated his accomplishments, apparently enough to offset his clumsy, weak, bumbling drivel that sadly passes for speech.

            And when Gore and Bush were locked in the election tie, how many Democrats marched under the banner of Bush’s victory, claiming that the machine count was the real one?  And how many Republicans rushed to aid the plight of Gore, to make sure all the votes were counted accurately?

            Why do so many Republican leaders automatically dismiss any concerns raised by environmental watchdog groups?  Is our continued existence as a species really that less important than making a buck?  I mean, yeah, there are some real wackos out there like the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) who will burn down warehouses and factories to save nature, but many other pro-environment organizations are legitimate and compelling, and we have a great deal to learn from them.

            What is it in the mind of the major party supporter that passes for right and wrong?  Do partisan followers have these concepts of justice rigidly fixed in their minds?  Do they have a set of beliefs?  Do they analyze every situation based on truth and contemplative reflection?  Or are the things they believe in completely tentative, subject to repeal if someone with whom they are aligned politically suddenly rushes headlong against those beliefs?

Bitter bickering between the parties is empty and hollow, and moral absolutism is a distraction from finding solutions to the real plights of starvation, poverty, corruption, the drug war, and so on.  To have real consistency in personal ethics, it becomes necessary to separate one’s self from one’s governmental representatives.  Though they may voice some of your personal politics to the highest chamber of your country, they are by no means your friends or your clique, and you don’t need to follow them off cliffs when they screw up.