The Quandry Of "Professional" Politicians

[JFN1]

Over at Daily Kos, a heated debate emerged with the posting of the diary below about the nature of politics and the web, about professional politicians and their motives, and about our greater responsibility as Americans. Even if you don't agree with the argument being made, the questions and possibilities raised are indeed disturbing. Here is the entire diary:

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It has become the popular thing, with professional politicians.

Find a friendly online audience, then tell that audience what they want to hear. Convey to the audience fighting words and strong rhetoric, full of emotive language, but devoid of true meaning.

Then suck up all the "feel-good" responses as the audience reacts to your celebrity and beats whatever drum you've hauled out, while praising you for making them feel good...about you doing, in reality, nothing. And it's not just Democrats on Kos doing it, but Republicans on right-wing websites, too.

Well, I've had enough of it. And from the general reaction to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's latest diary, I'm not alone.

I like to hear from our political leaders, I really do. But I've become weary of the constant posturing without action, the endless hand-wringing, and the outright duplicity of it.

Allow me to quote myself commenting on Ms. Pelosi's latest diary, titled, "Fighting the Republican Culture of Corruption:"

You're fighting? Is that what you call it, Representative Pelosi? Fighting? Funny, for the most part over the past 5 years, you Congressional Democrats have basically drawn a dotted line across your own throats with a tag that read, "Republicans - cut here."

I think it is galling for you to speak of your efforts as "fighting." While I do appreciate your perspective from on top, I cannot thank you for your rather weak approach to this fight.

What happened to speaking truth to power? Coming on Daily Kos and telling us all how you are "fighting" is not really the forum you should choose, if you are truly fighting, is it? Isn't it kind of like Dick Cheney choosing Fox News for going public about the shooting?

How about this: How about actually fighting with some substance. How about taking real, meaningful action, instead of coming to liberal sites to talk about action.

Show me something first. THEN tell me all about it...otherwise it becomes increasingly clear that Democrats are acting from the perspective of political self-preservation, and not from any true sense of duty to the American people.

Folks, let's take a good, hard look at what is really going on here. And I'm not pulling any PC punches, either - these are the facts:

● We have, beyond doubt, the most impeachable President in our history.

● We have the most corrupt Congress in our history, with lobbyists/big business running our government.

● We have rampant election fraud, crooked voting machines, crooked election officials.

● We have an economy in tatters, with the greatest redistribution of wealth in our nation's history, and all of it favoring the financially obese.

● We have an illegal war, featuring such bonuses as torture BY Americans, vast war profiteering, insufficient body armor, crooked contractors feeding our troops expired food and contaminated water.

● We have actual acts of treason (such as the outing of CIA agents for political gain), and blatent Constitutional violations (such as warrentless domestic spying) being committed, and even escalated through legislation such as the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act.

● We have incredibly high energy prices, while energy corporations pocket record-breaking profits.

And most of all, we have elected Democratic Congressmen and Senators REFUSING TO STAND UP - well, except at places like Daily Kos. Then they are as brave as can be. (The only notable exception to this is Mr. Conyers, who battles virtually alone.)

Okay, Kossaks, explain it me, then. Help me understand why the facts below, in the face of the ones above, continue:

● Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not holding daily press conferences, repeating over and over and over and over and over and over the facts above.

● Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not united EVERY SINGLE DAY in shoving the facts above down the collective throats of their peers - not their betters, as Democrats in Congress seem to believe and act upon - but their peers.

● Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not attempting to halt every piece of frivolous government business until the Constitution, and not the people currently in power, rules our country once again.

● Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not going on every and any talk show, radio and television, and engaging conservatives Republicans, the defenders of greed and corruption, and neither are they flooding newspapers and magazines with press releases and editorials doing the same.

● Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not doing the People's business, instead being careful of EVERYTHING THEY SAY AND DO, out of SELFISH FEAR that the Republican noise machine will jeopardize their re-election campaigns.

Understand this: Every single day, there are Democrats, who are in a position to challenge the cabal destroying our Constitution and our country, who do nothing except ensure their own political futures. Such people are, in reality, actively helping the Republicans who are intent on our devastation. Our Constitution has been challenged from within, and Democrats and Republicans are completely self-consumed, while the very foundations of our Republic are being torn asunder.

My fellow Americans, this is a watershed time, a cusp. And it is very possible that many Democrats, if they truly enter the fight for our nation, will lose their power, their position, their privilege. If they actually fight, and quit protecting their own careers, they may not get re-elected. But if they repeatedly and continually choose their own careers over the health and very life of our Constitution, then how are they any different from Republicans? Isn't their FIRST duty to protect the Constitution? Where in their oath of office does it state their first duty is to their own career?

IF THE LOSS OF ONE'S POLITICAL CAREER IS NOT WORTH GIVING FOR THE SAKE OF OUR COUNTRY, THEN WE ARE WELL AND TRULY SCREWED. For if our Democratic Congressmen and Senators will not make such a sacrifice for the rest of us, then we have chosen the wrong people all along.

Every single one of us asks, and expects, so much more than the potential loss of a job/career, from the men and women serving our country in the military. Isn't it disingenuous of us to ask so much less of our elected representatives, to have set, as a nation, our standards and expectations of our political leaders so pathetically low?

So my plea, I suppose, is this: Let's get really serious, folks, and stop participating in the circus. STOP HELPING DEMOCRATS DO NOTHING. Stop giving them total and unfettered access to the audience, unless they have something MEANINGFUL to REPORT to us. Stop reacting like star-struck teenagers to their celebrity, stop fawning all over them. Stop with all the feel-good nonsense. Stop feeding the beast.

And maybe - just maybe - something will change.

[teriyaki jones]

1. I agree as far as this goes . . .

But once we STOP doing these things, what must we START doing in their place?

What's the plan of ACTION?

I'm not busting you, I sure as hell don't have the answer.

It seems like everyone in the halls of power (with a very few exceptions, like Conyers and other members of BCC, and maybe Feingold) seems to have literally sold their souls. I wonder how much they got.

[Orsino]

2. How much are you missing?

How much have your real wages and buying power declined in the last decade or two? What's become of job security, the American manufacturing industry and its environment? Where are your independent media outlets? How much have the very rich pocketed in the meantime?

That's how much they got, and in this respect, one side of the aisle doesn't look much more benign than the other.

They are not of us.

[teriyaki jones]

3. No . . . that's how much they TOOK

And how much we lost.

But sometimes you gotta wonder, what is the real DEAL that seems to keep their ineffectual little hands tied.

[fed-up]

4. Kicked and recommended-well said! ACTIONS speak LOUDER than Words n/t

[OneBlueSky]

5. the quandry of ALL politician -- professional and otherwise -- is this . .

politics is incompatible with the truth . . .

you cannot be successful in politics if you tell the truth . . . period . . . every politician must lie and/or massage the truth in order to get elected . . . any candidate who stood up and actually told the truth about everything that's happening in this country would be deemed a "conspiracy theorist" and immediately dismissed from serious consideration . . .

unless . . .

unless that person is someone with an impeccable reputation who is already held in great esteem by the American people . . . a non-politician they'd never expect to hear it from, and would therefore listen to . . .

I have no idea who that person is -- but we need him or her badly . . . and soon . . .

[Odin2005]

6. the FUBARs of Carter and Mondale...

...have shown politicians that telling the truth means political suicide, Reagan proved the the sheeple like feel-gool gobbly-gok. Populism and demogogery is the enemy of good government.