jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Oct 5 09:36:41 CDT 2011
Dan, Sadly politics is broken, not just in the US but around the world. I did an 8 month training, one full weekend a month to learn to be an advocate for people with disabilities. My daughter Allie has many disabilities caused by a genetic duplication. One of the weekends was dedicated to educating us on the political system, what special interests means, lobbying and so forth. Elections are won with advertising, advertising costs money, and companies (mostly) have money. But in the end it all comes down to people. Everyone believes what they believe, are (have been) convinced of the "truth" of their belief system. Republicans really do believe that government has no business being in the "help" business, that it is the job of the people to help each other. Democrats believe the opposite. People have become jaded and believe that nobody cares any more and so stop caring themselves. Ignoring the names of the political parties, this is not an American problem it is a world problem, which occurs any time there are so many people that we no longer know our neighbors. I don't mean "know their face" I mean "get to know" our neighbors. What we were shown in that weekend is that the primary job of a politician is to get re-elected. The politician him/herself has a belief system but unless (s)he can get (re)elected (s)he cannot implement the belief system. Once elected, there are so many conflicting interests that (s)he cannot really function effectively. The system truly is broken, and probably always has been. The only hope for mankind is for us to realize that we all stand together or we all fall alone. People have to individually make an effort to help others less fortunate than ourselves. Which is a lot of work, and there is a college football game on... and after that is Dancing with the Stars... and besides, what difference can I really make? :) John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/4/2011 5:17 PM, Dan Waters wrote: > John- some of this will change in the next election. Unfortunately, too > many people need to learn things the hard way. And learning that voting > carefully, not emotionally, is actually important. Politics is not a > reality TV show - it's real people really getting hurt. > > Dan