Carlin said it best....
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.”
I am not unmindful of the warning that a successful politician does not win by disparaging the voters. Witness Hillary Clinton's calling us deplorables. Beside, the whole edifice of democracy rests on the will of the government and if we lose faith in that support the whole edifice falls.
Perhaps this is why Churchill opined that democracy is the worst form government, apart from all the others and why he is reported to have said, America will do the right thing after it tries everything else. Eventually the voters get around to the right answer.
Finally, I am very leery of surrendering power to elitists even on the promise of saving us from the vast unwashed electorate. Therein lies path to tyranny -as we all have just so shockingly seen in the twitter /FBI collaboration up elitists.
Knowing these things, or rather believing these things, one must nevertheless concede that the electorate has been way off course the last two elections. I think I expressed my view as to what has caused voters to vote against their own best interests in my previous reply.
The temptation is to blame the electorate, blame the people. The temptation is to short cut the process, to go for a top-down solution rather than a bottom up remedy, to reach for the charismatic figure on horseback to ride to the rescue.
We must avoid these temptations and hold fast the truths that founded this Republic in the first place, ultimately to trust the people because there is no place else to go.
