Licking the Razor's Edge (2015)

Addiction #23 – Freedom from POLITICS
“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and
decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than
we do.” ~ Wendell Berry
When societies are freshly hatched, it makes total sense for citizens to believe in a
process of choosing leaders who will hopefully represent their interests and govern with
forthright justice and humble sincerity. And yet, in most of the countries in our current
world, this belief is simply not reflected in reality.
To the contrary, for decades and decades, corruption, dishonesty and immoral behavior
by politicians have proven time and again that those in power tend to break their
promises to their constituents in favor of satisfying their own personal interests. Indeed,
access to vast banks of information proving this very
point are available to the average citizen with just a
few seconds of effort via the Internet. What was once
a mere platitude had been proven to be a truth cold &
hard: that the average politician is not concerned
about anything other than politics; that most public
servants is not in the least interested in serving anyone
other than themselves.
And so we are left with the puzzling question: if modern-day government has proven
over & over again to be a fraud perpetrated upon the world’s nations, and if the citizens
of those countries have immediate access to evidence proving conclusively that the vast
majority of their “leaders” are not to be trusted, and if this pattern of misrepresentation
has persisted for many decades on end (which it most certainly has), then why are so
many people still so emotionally attached to supporting political candidates who in all
likelihood will in no way care for them or support the causes that that they find to be
important?
Looking solely at the United States, it is astounding to me that so many caring and goodhearted
Republicans can honestly and fervently support economic measures that are
draconian in their callousness towards the poor and the homeless.
At the same time, it is equally bizarre to find so many caring and good-hearted
Democrats honestly and fervently supporting President Obama, whose foreign policy
measures resemble those of the most backward and morally corrupt terrorist nations.
Taking a step outside of our own society and looking at the situation as objectively as we
can, we must conclude that there is some sort of addiction at work. Indeed, I see no other
explanation for the number of highly intelligent people who are consistently and
repeatedly duped into actually believing the hollow rhetoric that their “leaders” (or their
would be “leaders”) spew forth on a regular basis.
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