Of Zealots and Madmen

“I think politics has made us crazy! Everybody in this country has lost their minds on politics. And we have forgotten that America is not a government. America is not a president. America is not a Congress." - Senator Marco Rubio. Senate floor speech, January 6th, 2021

While I agree with Senator Rubio's sentiment about what America isn't, I disagree about politics making us crazy. I think the past few months has finally pulled off the veil of the American electorate and we saw the true nature of the beast for the first time in a long while and it wasn't what we expected.

I made a point on a post by the Common Sense Conservative over on Facebook recently that I am going to expand on here. Over the past twelve years, the American electorate has mutated into a remarkably selfish monolith. We have found that a significant percentage of it is made up of shallow, single minded, impatient fools who are only out to see how much they can get for themselves regardless of the impact on the country as a whole. If you can offer enough people enough trinkets, they will vote for you as long as the prizes keep flowing.

That isn't who we are, but it is who we have become. In my lifetime alone we have gone from public assistance being a social stigma to seeing how much we can take from the government. Many of us know exactly where all that government aid comes from. Unfortunately, there are more that don't care and when their jobs are affected by their companies being taxed into unprofitability, somehow it is the greedy business owners who are to blame.

Getting back to the issue at hand, we somehow veered wildly away from a general sense of civics to a political ignorance so profound that many of us who do know what goes into many facets of politics cannot communicate effectively with them. In order to have productive dialogue, you need to have at least a basic level of understanding to start from. Put me in a room of electrical engineers and after five minutes I would be constantly checking to make sure I'm not drooling on my shoes. If people don't understand what government can and cannot do, it is difficult if not impossible to explain it to them. All they know is they aren't getting what they want, and because savvy politicians have made politics an emotional sport, they react emotionally...and occasionally violently.

It isn't craziness dear Senator, it's emotionality. When the unknowing are emotionally manipulated to believe that the only thing standing in the way of whatever it is that they want is their opponents, they are going to react with great emotion. There is a very thin line between passion and insanity. It is often very indistinct as well. The more it is exploited, the more indistinct it becomes.

No, I do not know how to fix it. I am just some schmuck in Wisconsin who tries, often unsuccessfully, to inform those in my limited sphere of influence. What I do know is as long as the unknowing continue to elect those politicians who are manipulating them, things will not improve.