My colleague writes a good post about treating the government as your big brother. Your big brother always knows the best for you and you should always be satisfied.
I agree with much of his post. We should be happy with the system our founders laid out. We are a representative democracy after all, and we vote for representatives, senators, delegates and for electoral votes.
However, there are some points i want to add here that deal with our modern political system. We live in the era of special interests where corporations, big donors and other influences control a lot of what happens in Washington. Congress has a historically low approval rating by the general public and people have little trust in the government. Both Republican and Democratic voters are choosing outsider candidates who won't be influenced by special interests.
Our founders did lay out a near perfect system, but they also didn't know the reality of today's politics where voters are having less and less influence in the process. For example, the Republican establishment is quietly trying to stop Donald Trump (who has the most votes in the primary process and who will likely secure the most delegates before the convention) from getting the party's nomination. Even though i personally disagree with almost everything about Donald Trump's views, i think robbing the majority of voters and stealing the nomination from him would be an utter disaster.
In conclusion, the reason big brother doesn't want to hang out with us is because of money in politics and laws like Citizens United. Both Republican and Democratic politicians have more incentive to be loyal to their donors than their voters. I personally think we should amend the constitution to make sure big money doesn't influence politics the way it does now, so that congress has more of an incentive to listen to "We the people".
No comments:
Post a Comment