I dislike politics.

Politicians disassociate people from their right to control government. We call them various names: Democrats, Republicans, Left-wing, and Right-wing. We throw out the term Liberal to vilify one dogma and catapult another name, Conservative to malign the other.
Government should mean people governing themselves rather than an elite few subjugating a mass they respect no more than any herd. But this is what exists today.

Governance is a matter of governing where expectations are defined, power to function is granted and there are mechanisms in place to verify acceptable performance. It consists of management and/or leadership processes being controlled and again, managed by the electorate. Where the American concept of self-governance was paid lip-service to in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the American populace has benignly and apathetically allowed these processes and systems to be typically administered by the government.

In the aspiration to ascend to the heaven of self-determination, people accepted the belief they must worship what they opposed: despotic and self-centered direction of their new representatives. Because the ocean no longer separated the despot from his subjects, the new despots were more acceptable for their home-grown nature. Time and distance are peoples’ enemies where it all concerns who (and how) they choose to speak for them.

It’s absurd to accept the idea of a democracy (technically defined as fully participatory government). Each citizen has an equal say, and equal opportunity to address the populace concerning their beliefs. There’d be nothing accomplished because debate would be interminable. So, America chose a republic as the basis of our national identity and practical existence in the world.

A republic is governmental reality where the state is considered a “public matter”. It is a public responsibility. It is NOT a private concern or right of any monarch to control the direction of who he perceives to be his subjects. Representatives are directly elected rather than gaining inherited office. The head of state isn’t a monarch. And, in theory, the government should be responsive and attentive to the needs and direction of the populace. This is opposed to representatives deciding the direction of governmental policy to be arbitrarily enforced upon the people. But, the latter exists more often than not.

People allowed governance to get away from them. The American people gave the keys to the hen house to the fox, the ferret and the snake and wonder why their safety is jeopardized. Senators and Representatives are human. As such they’re capable of greed, avarice, self-indulgence and a passionate pursuit of the power allotted them by people too apathetic and self-absorbed in their own day-to-day responsibilities to manage the employee.

When we centralized government we centralized governance. We accepted the elite’s propaganda and subsidized their drive for personal power by annulling ours as we give it to them by proxy. Once the egg is given to the snake it’s never a loan; it’s his possession and the snake defies you to try and get it back. This hubris is grows with time.

In our present form of government the selection of issues to be discussed is decided by representatives rather than the people affected by the government’s stance on any issue. The “what to be decided” takes precedence to the “who” should be deciding it. The servant should have his qualities of integrity, reliability and honesty tested and supervised. Does he govern based on the will of the people? Or does he fall into alignment behind his elders, men and women corrupted by their avarice and greed for more and more self-serving power over those to be governed?

If the “what” supersedes the magnitude of the discussion, it displaces the vision of “who” most represents what we want. The photo-flash blinds the sight of what’s going on at any given moment because it’s more apparent and disruptive. Its influence lingers but doesn’t have anything to do with the photo taken.

The only way to assure good governance is to take control of the horse and decide where we are going; not the horse meandering wherever he wants to go. A blind horse understands the cliff too late.

Thanks for listening