Enabling Bad Behavior…

INSIGHTANALYTICAL WELCOMES kenosha MARGE!

A big WELCOME to kenoshaMarge, who is honoring this blog with her first contribution!  KM has “known” me since the old Buzzflash days and managed to find her way here after my hasty departure from that site during the primary season. I’m so glad we’re “together again” and I hope visitors will enjoy reading her thoughts.  (She’s from the “North Country” and I’m in the Southwest, so it will be interesting to perhaps see different perspectives.) She’ll be posting when she gets the inspiration to get something out there…

AGAIN, WELCOME kenoshaMarge!!

GRL

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ENABLING BAD BEHAVIOR

Many voters are like parents who will not accept that their offspring might do bad things. Such parents will go to any lengths to convince themselves and others that little Johnny/Janie would never do drugs, have sex, lie, steal, or cheat.

Voters that believe that “their”party would never do bad things while demonizing the “other”party are like those close-minded parents. Denying a problem ensures that the behavior will not change. Not with kids and not with political parties.

I believed for most of my life that the Democratic Party was “better”than the Republican Party. I believed that because I thought Democrats stood for the things that I believed in, the things that were important to me. I thought they would fight for those things. That was back before I saw that Democrats would fight for nothing except re-election and their COLA.

The Republican Party wasn’t a comfortable fit for me except about fiscal responsibility. That was before Republicans decided to agree with the Democrats about fiscal responsibility. Such bi-partisanship goes to show that whenever two parties agree about something it doesn’t necessarily work out well in the long run. In fact, usually bi-partisanship means that both parties screw the public instead of one or the other.

For the last 6 months I have watched the party I always supported in dismay. Why are they undermining all they supposedly ever stood for? Any remarks they now make about Republican corruption will be like Madonna accusing another female of sluttish behavior.

The Democratic Party in their arrogance has let this get so far out of hand that nothing they do now will satisfy everyone in their party. Thus nothing will unify it. They broke it, now they own it. Millions of average Americans will pay the price as they always do.

The Democratic Party that I have supported for so long has engaged in some very bad behavior this primary season.  I’m not a loving parent that will reward that behavior with my vote. That would be enabling and rewarding such conduct.

Telling us that “he’s better than the other guy” as a reason to vote for a candidate was always foolish and has now become tiresome. Isn’t acceptance of such low standards ensuring that we will get more of the same? Why do we accept such nonsensical rhetoric as “pols will be pols” as a given?  If we ask nothing more of them we will get nothing more from them. What reason do we give them to behave better when we reward them no matter what they do?

Our only power is our vote. Once they are assured they have our vote no matter what they do, we have no power. Yet millions of voters will vote for people who have done nothing for them, do not intend to do anything for them and will not do anything for them. Why should they? Those voters will vote for the candidate anyway so long as the correct letter follows the name.

Corporate Republican Party and Corporate Democratic Party have aligned themselves with Corporate Media and we the people pay the price. We are force fed whichever candidate Corporate Media decides should be our leader. Whatever bits of “truthiness” they see fit to spoon feed us will play out in our newspapers, televisions and radios.

Americans need to wake up to the fact that they and they alone own their vote. No political party and no candidate are entitled to it. If we ever decide that we will not accept style over substance, rhetoric over reason, enthusiasm over ethics and a rock star over a work horse we just might get some real, decent, honorable choices in the future.

This November it appears once again we can choose between Corporate Candidate Republican and Corporate Candidate Democrat from the major parties and Candidate Doesn’t Stand a Chance In Hell from the sideliners. Ain’t no way to run a railroad or a Democracy.