Allow me to set the foundation under this post before I launch into my point.
My wife and I were talking last Sunday evening and she was telling me what some of the talking heads had said during the various Sunday morning talk shows. She likes to watch programs like Meet the Press, State of the Union, GPS, and several others that air on Sunday morning. Basically, it is a channel surfing thing that the guys would recognize better if the programs involved were college football games.
Unfortunately, she isn’t totally sure which program was on at the time or which talking head was speaking when she heard something to the effect that this mid-term election really doesn’t matter very much – the Presidential election in 2016 is far more important.
Let’s allow that thought to germinate for just a moment.
With all the dysfunction we have witnessed for the past several years how can anyone seriously think that this mid-term election doesn’t matter? We have so many big issues on our plate, nothing is getting done to resolve any of them and we are supposed to think that this election and the next two years don’t matter? I almost have to wonder if these next two years don’t matter – Why do we have a government at all? I’m being facetious, but you get the idea.
I haven’t heard the poll statistic recently, but I am pretty confident that the approval rating of Congress is less than 20%. I do hear news reports regularly which tell me the voters are frustrated with all the dysfunction, but they can’t figure out what to do about it. Let’s have a look.
It really doesn’t matter which political party you tend to agree with because all of them are trying to drive their ideology down everybody else’s throat. All the political parties are to blame for the dysfunction we have seen for several years, are seeing today and will probably be seeing for some years into the future. These ideologies have become more rigid in recent years to the point that the parties would rather to nothing than to compromise on anything. They see compromise as weakness and it doesn’t sell back home on the campaign trail.
From the voter’s perspective, the choice at election time is always trying to pick the lessor of two evils so they hold their nose and mark their ballot. They would go for a competant candidate with no political affiliation in a heart beat if they could find one, but there never seems to be one on the ballot so the frustration continues. Some voters decide not to vote at all and we hear things like “It really doesn’t matter anyway.” We probably don’t support the idea of not voting, but we do understand the frustration.
In my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?, I examined this situation and I have come to the conclusion that the answer to our problem is to do a write-in vote. Don’t write in Mickey Mouse or some other ficticous character because that only compounds the frustration. Instead, write in the name of someone you know who would do the sort of job you would approve of if that person actually won the election. Talk to your neighbors and friends in your voting district and let them know what you are doing so that they might join you in your protest. The more people who protest, the more likely that the message of displeasure will be received.
Catroonist Walt Kelly offered us the quote I am using as the title for this post several decades ago when he was working on a strip dealing with our environmental stewardship, but it is equally applicable here – “We have met the enemy…and he is us.” We should all be grateful to Mr. Kelly for giving us such a clear description of the root of our political dysfunction.
The Sausage Grinder is broken; will you help to fix it?
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