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Is Politics a Joke?
Politics is a joke, but the problem with political jokes is that too many get elected. It is ironically funny but politicians and diapers have one thing in common; they should both be changed regularly and for the same reason. --old political proverb
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. --Plato
Many politicians are jokes, but political involvement is a social necessity according to Plato. Politics in the US is increasingly distrusted by voters, according to a new Pew poll that found only 22% of US voters trust the federal government, while 43 % thinks its impact is negative. In 1997 Pew found that 50% felt the government had a positive effect on their lives with 31% negative.
Politics is a social necessity because we are social creatures. Newly born children cannot live alone. They must socialize to survive, first with their nuclear families, then with friends and neighbors and others in their culture. Politicians make the rules of socialization for the 6,800,000,000 humans who populate our earth. Whether they be dictators or monarchs, fascists or socialists, oligarchs or democrats, liberals or conservatives, politicians make the rules for 6.8 billion people to follow. People either live by the rules or become lawbreakers. Those apprehended for lawbreaking might be fined, imprisoned, tortured, or killed. So, whether we like it or not, we ignore politics at our peril. Why not pursue the politics of being friends and neighbors with everyone?
We should translate friends and neighbors into every language and culture and promote politics that encourages every human being to view everyone else as members of the human family and friends and neighbors. Why not focus politics on a cooperative relationship for all people, everywhere?
Humorist Will Rogers said, "There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." Rogers would have loved to joke about the joke of a President, George W. Bush. A joke was commander-in-chief of the US military, a military as big as all other nations' militaries combined! Bushisms were as hilarious as Bush was dangerous.
Here's a Bushisim revealing a Freudian mixture of paranoia and sadism: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we".
The democratic process is a messy, but necessary means to try to make our world a better place. As a young man I became a political coordinator and then executive director of the national campaign of Governor George Wallace of Alabama. I was a racist in denial who followed my family heritage but changed almost 40 years ago, becoming an activist for racial justice, a life member of the NAACP and was co-counsel in a successful case against the Klan for burning a black church in South Carolina. My change was motivated by friends who had turned away from their Southern heritage of racism and I began to empathize with people I was taught to fear. I was elected to the South Carolina State Senate in 1976. I ran for state wide office a few times against the big money on reform issues, had close races but wasn't elected. The media makes it a money raising horse race and make money running the ads. I made an issue of how things could be if money didn't control every aspect of our daily lives.
I have been a political activist for peace, civil rights, consumer rights, environmental justice, have hosted radio shows, and enjoy writing about political issues. I have a close up and personal experience with politics and my long time observation of the system confirms that we have the best government money can buy.
Mega corporations, big banksters and fellow Wall Street bandits love the two party system, since it's easier to buy off two parties than more than two with their lobbyists and their campaign contributions. Goldman Sachs announced $3.46 billion in earnings (Isn't that an oxymoron!) after finally being accused of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It is now revealed that SEC employees were watching sex on their computers rather than watching out for Goldman's swindles. Goldman's former President, was Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, and a leader in repealing the Glass-Steagal Act along with Republican Senator Phil Gramm. That Act prohibited commercial banks from collaborating with brokerage firms or engaging in investment banking. Its repeal allowed the creation of credit derivatives such as credit default swaps, a money shuffling, get-rich-quick financial house of cards that precipitated the latest recession.
As Congress debates a bill to regulate financial firms like Goldman, President Obama-who has many appointees and contributors from Goldman and Wall Street-now says he wants them to "join us instead of fighting us", and that they will profit by doing so. He says he also wants more consumer financial protections, limits on the size of banks and the risks they can take, reforms on executive compensation, to create more consumer financial protections, to give investors more in company management, and greater transparency for credit derivatives.
Politicians are a joke when they are purchased to put profits over people.
Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC . His blog is http://tomandjudyonablog.
51 Comments so far
Show AllYes, politics is an insulting joke, but the author is correct--ignore it at one's peril.
Of course Obama is telling Goldman Sachs and the other banksters that they can profit by "joining us" in crafting bankster "reform". Obama just succeeded in signing one of the biggest corporate welfare programs in history disguised as health care reform that will increase insurance and drug company profits while costing consumers more money for less health care. Change you can believe in!
The more the banskters join Obama's bankster "reform", the more money the next meltdown will cost US taxpayers and the more profitable the next meltdown will be for the banksters.
"Is Politics a Joke?" An impossible question to answer because there is no logic to politics. Mr. Turnipseed asks the question that can be considered a metaphor assuming that because we are social animals therefore politics are necessary. Perhaps Plato was incorrect in his definition. Perhaps politics are just a mirror of the hopeless cause of organization of a species that can well get along without leadership if it so chose to do so.
We may be able to get along without leadership, but not without cooperation.
Bingo! It appears that fennec conflated the two.
Organization does not mean the inability to cooperate at all. Bingo yourself.
The article is a joke, and a bad one at that.
No. Perhaps it was just not phrased pompously enough for you.
It's too bad that the author, during his years of progressive activism, didn't bother to study K. Marx at all. With that knowledge he'd learn that parliamentary democracy is just another tool the ruling class uses to maintain its hegemony. He'd learn that by defining "democracy" within the narrow confines of bourgeois thinking - purposely ignoring economic democracy - means that real democracy is unobtainable. He would have also learned that the capitalist class will only play the game of parliamentary democracy as long as it has total control over that game. When "democracy" arrives (as in Chile and many other examples) that gives political power to the people, the capitalist class is all too ready to do away with its democracy charade and carry out a coup.
This doesn't mean that the working class should abandon participation in the bourgeois democratic game, as even political struggles within those limitations extends the class struggle and helps to bring more clarity to the class struggle. But it does mean that we need to be aware of the limitations and organize and unite around struggles of a progressive nature outside the narrow framework of parliamentary democracy.
Cheers.
Struggle, pardon what you might call political pandering, but I receive a daily e-mail from the World Socialists with a link to the best overall news essays I read every day(next to Common Dreams). They cover current events relating to political issues with a global perspective. Their writers speak often and positively of our man K Marx and the class struggle. I favor a parliamentary democracy that takes the money out of politics. If I selected a political preference it would be democratic socialist.
I appreciate your interesting view of parliamentary democracy and my essay.
Tom Turnipseed
Bernstein/enough time = Tony Blair.
"Is Politics a Joke?"
IMO, politics is not a joke. Politics is now the CRIME!
Politics becomes manifest as and when the collective awareness of the population fails to realize their inseparable connection to the self organizing aspect of life as sometimes observed in nature. There will be detractors to this statement who belong to the " without leaders there would be chaos crowd." Really? Perhaps you are not paying attention.
Well said.
No, politics is not a joke, as there is nothing funny about a few hundred people that are supposed to be keeping this country going acting like spoiled children. It is possible to disagree and still get things done sensibly, but it takes a degree of respect and co-operation as well as a measure of integrity. When a bunch of paid-off greedy characters spend most of their time figuring how to oppose others and attempt to outdo everyone else in dirty name-calling, our country will suffer for it. It is time for politicians to do the job they are sent to do, and get out of the pockets of the rich and powerful.
Politics is not, in itself, a joke.
It becomes a joke--and a bad one--when folks who should get off their butts and participate in a conscious way abdicate their responsibilities to the jackals and pickpockets and pawns of the plutocrats.
Hence, gringo politics is a very sick joke, indeed.
And all the other people and species on this planet are paying for it.
I always thought of politics more as haiku ...
You contributed
Your boss contributed more
We work for him now
That quote by Plato sure is true today. " Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber"and I might add; those who have integrity and cannot be bought and want nothing to do with the corruption in politics are punished by being governed by those who can be bought and are dishonest.
Gov360.org... a solution
is war the punchline?
Yes, politics is a joke - A VERY DIRTY JOKE!!!!
FrankS: The Greeks would agree with you! The word politics actually comes from the Greek and its literal interpretation is: poli--means many in the Greek language and tics means blood sucking leeches!
A kakistocracy pure and simple.
We need not 500,000 people , or a million , but the entire dis-enfranchised country, to stand up to the one percent that hold the reins.
The french did it , why can't we?.. where are the guillotines manufactured these days?
no use, we have bought and paid for the very weapons that will kill us.
When is politics not a joke?
When you realize it is disastrously serious and you most likely are a brunt of the joke.
Saying "no use" is not funny and it is destructive. Work in your garden, stop buying corporate crap, take your money out of corporate banks, start something.
All that talk at the end of the article about what Obama "wants" made me think of the trivet I saw on a kitchen wall: "Kissing don't last. Cooking do!"
I'm getting seriously tired of watching him say the opposite of what he means. A classic example was him saying he prefers a public option after having promised the insurance CEOs there would be NO public option. Have to give him credit for keeping promises to his base, even if he lies about who his base really is.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
fixcongressfirst.org
We need to put some space between 'our' representatives and corporate campaign donations.
The subtext of what TT is saying is this: it's our fault.
Instead of electing and supporting the TT's of the world, we CHOOSE to vote for the scumbags and criminals, or to not vote at all.
Just because some Bankster candidate hogs the air time doesn't mean we HAVE to vote for him/her. We KNOW said Bankster candidate is a Bankster candidate hogging the airwaves. We also KNOW that, with very little effort, we could learn who else is running.
But we CHOOSE not to. We're not forced, coerced, or brainwashed.
In 2010, we KNOW that in EVERY ELECTION there are other candidates running, many of whom are good and worthy fellow Americans. It's a given. Green, Lib, etc. Nobody can claim this is some sort of secret or revelation.
Still, we CHOOSE the worst of the f**king worst. Then bitch to high heaven that we're being f**ked by the worst f**kers around.
Huh.
What do you mean "not forced"? Don't be so silly!
The American "winning is everything" mentality absolutely dictates voting for candidates designated as "viable" by their corporate sponsors and the media. What those candidates really stand for is irrelevant, and no "land of the free and home of the brave" American can possibly risk "losing" by voting on the basis of what he or she actually believes in.
U.S. politics a joke? Hardly. More like a tragedy in the truest sense. It's not a question of voting against one's own interests. It's a complete distortion of those interests, greatly assisted by willful blindness and a periodically scheduled "suspension of disbelief" in their (mis)representation.
Let's face it folks, our political system is corrupt. Period. Therefore, in my opinion, to effectively participate in our pay-to-play government, "we the people" must organize, pool our money together, hire the best lobbyist, and out-spend the corporations.
Obviously you have to pay politicians for results. Correct? This may seem like a silly idea, but let's face reality, the current political system seems to work very well for corporations. Am I wrong? They seem to get whatever they desire - which begs the question, why can't it work for "we the people"?
Let me recommend our first order of business - once we've bought our politicians - overturn "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad" and take back the rights of corporate personhood, and take back our country.
We cannot afford our politicians, either to buy them or to keep them.
Rather than purchase, we must take. Hopefully that may happen with relatively little violence. Not only is nonviolence preferable, it is almost invariably more effective than violence against a massively violent opponent far better armed than oneself.
When he left office, George Bush's approval rating was probably worse than was that of George III in Massachusetts in 1776.
Congress's approval rating was lower and is lower than that.
Even the teabag contingent, for all its flagrant ignorance, makes more sense much of the time than the apologists of our feds.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050509/alterman
An unnamed Bush official - now could easily come from the Obama administration, truth be told - talking to reporter, Ron Suskind:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Another adviser explained:
"Let me clue you in. We don't care ..."
The article was nothing new. As usual though there was no realistic proposition about how we can upstage the corporate agenda, eliminate the two party system, elect ANYONE who favours the public interest or bring in any type of financial and/or political reform to loosen the corporate grip on America.
Disturbing poll shows that only 22% of people trust the government but that only 43% think it is negative. Does the other 57% of Americans believe that their lives are just hunky dory? Bottom line is that most Americans don't make the connection between corporate America and their country's policies. Also most American have been so brainwashed by corporate media, that they believe only the Democrats and Republicans can be taken seriously in any election. In fact most American don't even notice that all of the restaurants in a ten mile radius of where they live are corporate chains, that all of the food they buy in the supermarket is produced and distributed by a handful of companies or that the non-unionized, anti-democratic, environmentally unfriendly, Wal-Mart is the world's largest employer.
Politics won't be a social necessity for the majority of Americans because the majority of Americans are too busy buying into the corporate message of consumerism, wealth and fame.
"Politics is a social necessity because we are social creatures." The problem is, IMO, not the bad apples in the barrel but the construction of the barrel that should be our main challenge. It is the fact that we are represented rather than represent ourselves that is the major factor in our collective dilemma. We need a system where we vote for spokespersons, who relay to the House or Senate floor the wishes of the majority of that district and are not allowed to vote their own personal opinion.
In order to change to that system we have to continue voting for progressives and continue working against Blue Dogs/Conservatives.
Dafoe
How do you stop the system and reform it or change it? Oorganize to stop voting in an election, that's a gamble and a start but get off your collective asses and do something constructive.. Riot, raise a little hell, have a revolution, boycott walmart or change your accounts to other banks, have a day when you target one bank and remove your deposits to another bank and tell them why. Jam your senator's/representatives offices and ask him some embarrassing questions and keep on doing it. Tell him/her your tired of him representing other interests and not the commonweal , ask him about his finances etc.
Truthfully nothing will be done.
You can't stop the system. You reform it at the voting booth. They have the money, the disgusted majority have the votes. I would hope that they vote for Progressives but Hedges and Chomsky are concerned that too many of the general public will vote for strong leadership in the form of ultra-conservatives in the absence of a strong leadership from progressives. Getting the Progressive message accepted by the majority will not be easy because of the demonization by the Right of the Progressive movement as being too close to communist thinking. In other words there can be no alternative to Right thinking. Our only hope is that the general public will be sufficiently upset and sufficiently informed of how the Right works for a few and the Progressives work for the majority that the progressives will have a chance.
Turnipseed says: "Politicians are a joke when they are purchased to put profits over people."
I disagree. Politicians become the ENEMY when they put profits over people whether they are purchased or not.
Politics is not a joke simply because it's not funny or even amusing. What it is is like watching "Psycho" after your doctor's told you you have six months to live.
I don't vote because it is a waste of time. If you want to change the political system don't vote. Once it looses all legitimacy because such a small percentage vote, it will change.
And we may not like the change, but voting only supports the corruption of the system as it is now.
Isn't it obvious now that the system of government that the founding fathers handed down to us is what's got us into this mess, what with its many built-in devices for frustrating popular rule? No surprise, then, that despite the impending doom, not only is our government doing nothing to avert the unthinkable, it couldn't care less. Which raises the question as to why we stick with politics as usual? Doesn't this amount to doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different outcome, which just happens to be one definition of insanity? But if not same old same old status quo, what then? Given that time's running out, the only action that has any chance of turning things around; namely, our rising up en masse and changing the world. Impossible? Isn't that what was said twenty some years ago about the possibility of a popular uprising bringing down the Soviet Empire? Well, is our situation any less desperate than theirs?
Lets put this as simply as possible. If you believe anything Obama says, your an idiot!
There's a lot of cosmic despair on the left these days, and people are making huge generalizations about government and society.
This is perfectly all right--but we should remember that our angst is much more immediate and simple.
To speak bluntly: we were heinously betrayed--over and over again--by our President during his first year in office. From the political perspective, we were snookered. Conned. Smacked upside the head. Royally reamed. Pwned. Make up your own word for what Obama did to us.
People are cutting Obama an incredible amount of slack, but it really does come down to his misbehavior. We were alive with hope just a few months ago--entirely because of Obama. I'm sure the "trust in government" poll numbers have plummeted in the last year. This is our situation.
We on the left are like a guy who's been dumped by a woman and now declares all women to be unreliable. That woman betrayed me; therefore all women are untrustworthy.
Barack Obama has turned out to be a ratfink. Therefore all politicians all through time have been ratfinks. This is overgeneralization based on strong emotion.
It is good to philosophize, and I'm in no position to cast the first stone. But we need to remember that we are reeling from a very specific and recent betrayal, committed largely by one man. We are saying politics is evil and making vast generalizations largely because one guy screwed us over.
So, will we be fooled again? Obama is not the first to screw us over. Clinton and Gore did that just fine thank you. And, for those who supported and voted for Reagan and Bush, they got fooled and betrayed too.
Ancient adage:
Ignorance can be educated.
Stupidity last for ever.
United Stupids of America?
Be ashamed!
Ancient adage:
Ignorance can be educated.
Stupidity last for ever.
United Stupids of America?
Be ashamed!
I gave up on the politicians in both parties long ago when I came to the rather painful conclusion that money is what motivates them. We vote them into office, but they pimp themselves out to the highest bidder. You cannot be a moral person and be a politician. The two don't ever go together, at least not in the capital bastion of the world, the USA.
joke? no...
justice? no...hence the tendency to joke...
juggernaut? ah...