10.17.2006

Where are the cons in Congress?

Right, we all know that politicians are a bunch of lying no-good warmongering crooks, but in all seriousness, in the interests of a functioning democracy, where are the cons in Congress?

In a democracy, everyone should have a say in the running of the country and the making of the laws, agreed? The leaders of the country should be representative of the cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum of the country. In New Zealand, one of the planet's better democracies, they have a pretty wide mix of race (as NZ didn't commit genocide like certain countries we could mention), a pro-cannabis white Rastafarian and even a transsexual MP in Parliament.

In America, however, the leaders are almost exclusively chosen from the business and economic world, and they run the country for the sole benefit of those aspects of society. What's worse is that they're held to a higher moral standard than ordinary folks. Americans have been conditioned to expect their leaders to be solid upstanding christian family men. Ideally white. They certainly wouldn't elect a black atheist woman into the presidency. What's important though, is that in a country which locks up the largest percentage of its population in the world, those people have no representation. Imagine a Congress with a representative population of ex-cons, and then see how long anti-drug laws will last.

Without honest parliamentary representation like this, all a government has to do to undermine democracy is increase the legal tolerances until everyone a criminal. If you include speeding in a car, almost everyone in the western world probably is. Sociological mission creep, boiling the frog and all that.

Expecting these 'high moral standards' of our representatives, is not representative of society. This happens in the church too - priests are set this abnormally high standard of behaviour and the failure to live up to this standard manifests in aberrant sexual behaviour in many cases. In politics it comes out more as financial corruption, but there's plenty of sexual shit in there too. The point is, these overtly high expectations encourage corruption. Cover up something small, and you're on the road to bribery and muck-raking power plays. We need more politicians of the George Clooney mould. 'Yeah, I did it all, I inhaled, snorted, laid whatever'. Be fucking honest, and then no-one can bribe them and pressure them into serving special interests other than the public.

The US should get more like NZ - get a few stoners, gays (open not closet), ex-cons, transsexuals into Congress. It would make for better TV too.

No comments: