The American Galactic Republic

“The Republic is not what it once was—the Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good.” - Chancellor Palpatine


"There is no civility, only politics." - Chancellor Palpatine


OK, never mind that Palpatine was one of if not the most evil being in that Far Off Galaxy, he certainly still has a point regarding the Galactic Senate. 

...and the same could be said of the American Congress. 

Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Corn, Big Tobacco, Big Whatever. I don't think there is a single American who would say Congress wasn't ineffectual, broken and paralyzed by partisan bickering and special interest money. 

But all of that special interest money wouldn't matter if it wasn't for a few, rather two main things. 

Career Politicians...

...and this two-party system. 

Wonder why nothing gets done in Washington D.C.? There are your answers. 

For the Career Politician, every season is election season. They never stop campaigning. This leads to two results, one, that the politician in question is always seeking campaign funds, and second any solution a politician would come up with would only be a short term fix at best and an empty hollow feel-good measure at worse. To a career politician the general population like us are nothing more than votes to keep their jobs. 

Case in point, the whole issue with guns. Many career politicians like Feinstein only pitch hollow solutions that sound nice to some people but really do nothing of value. She wants to bring back an "assault weapon" ban, when the previous one did nothing to prevent the North Hollywood Shootout, or Columbine. No Child Left Behind and the prevalence of standardized tests is another. "No Child Left Behind" sounds nice and all, but the whole thing just degraded into teaching the test. It's all about the test now, imagination isn't fostered, and it's imagination that spurs innovation. 

To boil it all down, unless you're contributing to their campaign at the end of the day the career politician doesn't give a shit about you. They'll throw you a bone and tell you things you like to hear, but at the end of the day the career politician doesn't listen to you the voter, they listen to their campaign contributors. The career politician doesn't care about the common good. The conservative Republican doesn't care that abstinence only programs lead to more teen pregnancies and the liberal Democrat doesn't care that guns have been used in self-defense. Or look at the perpetual gridlock in Washington. They don't care about the common good, they only care about what is good for the party. Every issue is approached with the thought "Is this good for the Party". Or "Will this bring the party back into power sooner?" And I say "sooner" because with only two viable parties, the out of power party will return to power in the near future.

Of course that corruption leads to other problems. Namely people losing faith in the whole democratic process and becoming completely apathetic to the whole matter. Most people probably wouldn't know what amendment gives them the right to a trial (the 6th) or gives the right not to be arbitrarily searched (the 4th), but show them a picture of some celebrity or athlete and they're know who they are in an instant. 

How can we stop this? For one thing term limits would go aways towards blunting this problem. Holding political office shouldn't be a career. Given a time limit to be in office, the idea of constantly campaigning doesn't mean as much, when there is no election left for you. 

Secondly, people just need to give a fuck. Need to pay attention and listen to what goes on. If you can spout off Kobe Bryant's career stats, but have not clue what has been going on with Bradly Manning, you need to reconfigure you priorities. When the government his trampling over someone's Constitutional rights, and could do the same thing to anyone, then really, why is how many points Kobe scored in the last game worth giving a fuck about? 

But what of the second problem? We can institute term limits and other solutions to keep the same corrupt career politicians from occupying their seats for life, but it still wouldn't matter if the next ass in that seat just towed the party line. Many politicians are just hollow caricatures of human beings and only adhere to the party line. Sure there are a few who tend to break ranks with their party like John McCain at one point, but in general these two political parties are like some kind of political hive mind. 

What it would take to solve this issue would have to be a paradigm shift. It certainly won't happen over night, but maybe it's moving in that direction. Congress has abysmally low approval rating and the category of voters called "Independent" is getting bigger and bigger each cycle. Maybe the day will come when voters finnally get fed up with this Republicrat and Demopublic bullshit.