Who I am, Part 3: Pro Bono Publico!

[I know, I know, I'm a lazy bastard. Can't be helped. I've always believed that a writer should never force his muse, and my muse takes lots of mental health days. So let's get on with it.]





Politics, politics, politics, politics! No one likes it. Everyone mocks it. "Politician" has been a term of disdain for so long, it's difficult to imagine the mindset of someone who would use it any other way. Half of America is so fed up with the whole process that they don't even vote. The big parties differ only in the interest groups they pander to, and the minor parties have a snowball's chance in a atom bomb test of winning so much as one seat in Congress. Et cetera, yadda yadda, ad infinitum, and no, I'm not using this introduction as a strawman to break apart and convince you otherwise.





Where do I fit into all of this? I just registered as a Republican in my home state, and I basically held my nose while doing it. I was a Libertarian until the unsurprisingly major-party-favoring election laws around here basically forced the party into non-existence (it involved petitions and signatures and was largely preposterous as near as I can tell). I wasn't super enthusiastic about being a Libertarian either; their foreign policy attitudes remind one of the America First committees prior to WW2, and their underlying philosophy is essentially caustic to social order. But the Libertarians came the closest to my idea of what politics should be about, so I went with them. Now I'm back with the country-club swine and the Christian Coalition. Hey, it could be worse. I could be living in a country where there was one party to join, one man to vote for, and anyone who said it should be otherwise disappeared following a knock at the door.





My aforementioned political philosophy shouldn't, in fairness be called that, as a political philosophy that's strictly anti-political is only amusingly ironic the first time you pen it so. I am largely against politics. Oh, I grasp that they're a fact of life, that all groups and societies have pecking orders and organic dynamics wearing down at said pecking orders. I'm not naive. I can't even say that I'd like all politics, political life, and political culture to disappear. We've got to have something to talk to each other about, and the line-item veto is at least no more mind-numbing a topic than whichever masochistic wanker just got voted off American Idol (Do you care? I mean truly, why would anyone watch something so soul-crushing and uneventful if they didn't have to? I just don't get it).





No, what I'm really against is the excessive politicization of our culture, to the point where any issue of import is sent for Congress and the President to rattle each other about for a few terms and then try to slip under the Supreme Court's door when it isn't looking. Our 86,400-second-per-day news cycle demands that someone be saying something, about anything, at all times, whether it's actually new or relevant or more interesting that watching fleas mate or not. I think the example of Laci Peterson will be sufficient for my point: look, I'm sorry she died so horribly, and her unborn child with her. My heart goes out to her family. I hope they lock her husband (should he be guilty) up and throw away the key. Why do I have to hear about the daily developments of the case? What else do these people want from me?





The same cycle of faux-concern and instant-gratification is removing any sense of restraint from our politics. If one state or county wants to try school vouchers, the teachers unions nationwide raise the standard of revolt in the press, and pretty soon parents who just don't want their kids going to school in a drugged-out war zone have to ask permission from Congress, because All. Are. Concerned. What would be an easily passed or failed experiment in scholastic funding has become a Drama, with the usual cast of characters: the Call to Arms, the Covertly Condescending Opposition Statement, the Televised Shouting Match, the Backroom Deal, and the Anti-Pentagon Whine ("If we can spend this money on a B-1 bomber...")





We shouldn't be making decisions like this, in committee, with focus groups, weeping like Priam for Troy over whether we spend 3% more or 5% more on something that isn't going to solve the problem it's designed for. This is shadowboxing with democracy. This is not what was intended.





If you wanted to nail me down, you could call me a federalist, not in the Adams/Hamilton way, but in the devolution way. The federal government spends too much money getting too little accomplished. It creates numbers that have no basis in reality, lots of guns and bombs, and jobs that pay way better than mine and require half the work. Read the Declaration of Independence sometimes and see how many of the charges levelled against George III's government can be safely directed at our own. Then as now, ancient local liberties were being slowly ignored by a centralized power. That's not the way the Founders wanted to see things happen, and we could demonstrate a little bit of gratitude to their vision. Not every one of our little issues needs the sages of the U.S. Government to find answers for. Not everything is the business of society as a whole. We aren't a church, and we aren't an empire; we're a confederacy of free men and women endowing public servants with certain tasks. Everything else is our own bag to carry.





Returning to this way of thinking isn't going to be easy. We're going to have to give up a few things that we've gotten used to: bailouts, handouts, the freedom from actually having to participate in the res publica. I think it's worth it, though. Because the alternative frightens me.