Chapter 53

53 a) The Important Issues & polarization (opinion)

Have you ever wondered why most politicians tend to avoid the important issues? I have. The primary reasons that they ignore the critical issues like the national debt (and associated “unfunded” liabilities), the budget deficit, killing our young men & women overseas, our massively accelerating cost of health care (without providing quality care), the unwarranted and ever increasing cost of advanced education, our enormous incarceration rate, among others.

My guess is that the main reason is that either the solution is unknown or not politically acceptable for re-election purposes. My initial gut reaction is to blame our elected representatives who are in a position to address the problems. However, I think the real culprit is our system for electing and retaining said representatives. I have discussed, at length, in earlier posts the problems with the two-party system, the Electoral College & the lack of term limits. Therefore, please refer back to these posts for the details. To solve most, if not all of our problems we need to adhere to the intent of the Founding Fathers with regard to tenure. They viewed representation as a “duty” to serve in a temporary capacity and then return to their actual careers. My guess is they would be appalled by the culture of “career politicians” that has developed in their country.

What is typical is that politicians tend to focus on the negatives of an opponent or the “other” party. It seems like the real intent is to polarize voters and create an environment where we are too busy fighting among ourselves to pay any attention to the real problems.