Here’s how it all goes down in Congress: republicans are vindictive and corrupt and Democrats are spineless and corrupt. That’s it. Politicians care only about campaign contributions and reelection campaigns. Congressmen have merely become the pawns of big businesses, representing their owners while maintaining the façade of representing their constituents. We do, after all, have the best government money can buy.
The reason I am going on this tirade is I happened across a fabulous comic in the newspaper this Sunday. This comic centered around a thought provoking allegory for our political system. Say you are a UCLA football fan, but someone offered you $1000 to cheer for USC just once. Naturally, you’d do it, because you can always cheer for the Bruins next week plus you just got $1000 richer. This is a perfect allegory for our Congressional system. No matter how much a Senator wants a public option and no matter how much his constituents want a public option, if a health insurance company makes a million dollar contribution to your campaign, you’re gonna vote down a public option. It’s simple self-preservation. And what’s the true irony, if a Senator refuse the contribution and stand up for his own beliefs and his constituents’ beliefs (i.e. do the job he was elected to do), he would lose his reelection for lack of funding.
I think this is tragic. Our representative government barely represents us anymore. It is shifting to an oligarchy or even a plutocracy. Our Congressmen have been bought. They have betrayed us. I find great truth in a quote by Mark Twain: “To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.”
