Don't give up

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

But don't give up. Yes, this is infuriating, maddening, and terribly, terribly depressing, but we can't give up. I don't understand how the American people can be this stupid, to let the GOP get away with this kind of thing - indeed, to reward them for it, if polls are to be believed. Yes, we were stupid enough to elect George W. Bush, but didn't we learn anything from that?

And it's frustrating that the Democrats have no spines, but I guess that courageous politicians soon find themselves out of work. (And that is our fault, too.) Well, incumbents have a huge advantage in elections, so politicians have a tendency to play it safe. That's the case on both sides of the aisle - just ask Bob Inglis if you think otherwise - but conservatives value obedience and order, so a cowardly Republican just follows the party line.

That means that Republicans can be completely spineless and still get things done - or, in the current situation, prevent anything useful from being accomplished - simply because they all stick together. They vote the party line even when they've long argued for the opposite. And they suck up to the far-right fanatics in their party, simply because they fear them. That is cowardice, it really is. It just plays out differently in the GOP.

Democrats value freedom and individuality, so they're never going to march in lockstep. Yes, I wish that Democratic politicians would show a little of the cohesiveness that Republicans routinely demonstrate, but I don't want them to turn into Republicans. After all, I don't especially value obedience to authority either.

But I do value courage, and passion. Will voters reward Anthony Weiner for his passion? Or will his Republican opponents be able to use that to discredit him? To me, the answer should be obvious. But clearly, most voters aren't like me (or we'd have a much better government).

A lot of this has to do with fund-raising, too. Typically, from a politician's first day in office, his overriding concern is to gather the campaign war-chest he needs to win re-election. Most voters aren't particularly knowledgeable and aren't especially smart or well-educated. They can be swayed by campaign ads. That means politicians must keep big donors happy. And now that corporations can directly buy their own politicians, rather than indirectly, as in the past, this is only going to get worse.

But we citizens have done this to ourselves. We elected Republicans - or, perhaps worse, couldn't be bothered to vote at all - who stacked the Supreme Court with right-wing fanatics. These are lifetime appointments, so we'll have to live with these mistakes for decades (even assuming that we don't make similar mistakes in the future). Depressing, isn't it?

We elected Republicans who gave tax cuts to the wealthy, who deregulated our financial industry, who started two wars, both with borrowed money and neither one with an exit strategy, who pushed supply side (trickle-down or voodoo) economics against all evidence, who politicized the Department of Justice, who tortured prisoners of war, and on and on. This mess - these messes - didn't just happen. They're our fault.

But the fact that we've done this to ourselves makes it clear that we can also change course. It's up to us. If politics bores you, if you can't be bothered to pay attention - and to vote - then our democracy will fail. It's that simple. It won't be easy. If you're easily discouraged, if you're a faint-hearted patriot, if you're naturally lazy and apathetic, then our chances diminish greatly. You can't rely on everyone else to fix your own country for you. A democracy of couch potatoes can't long survive.

And unfortunately, senior citizens - who tend to be the most conservative, the most gullible, and the easiest to scare - generally vote in large numbers. Younger people, more progressive and less fearful, don't. You'd think it would be the other way around, wouldn't you? Aren't young people supposed to be more active, more optimistic, more eager to accomplish something? Well, on average, it doesn't seem to work like that.

Non-voters can always think of excuses for not voting. I know. I've been there myself. You're too busy. You don't know enough about the candidates.* Your vote doesn't matter. All politicians are alike anyway (obviously untrue, but I hear it all the time). An ordinary person can't change anything. Yada, yada, yada. In fact, that's clearly wrong. Senior citizens generally get what they want because they vote.

True, no politician will agree with you about everything. So what? Even if it comes down to the lesser of two evils, at least there is a lesser. And if not, leave that race blank. You don't have to mark every spot on the ballot, just as long as you participate. This is your duty, but it is also a privilege. Our ancestors fought and died to give you that right. More importantly, perhaps, many spent their entire lives working to maintain this opportunity.

Besides, no one ever said that this would be easy. It won't be. It will be a long, hard haul, with many disappointments along the way. And it will never end. As long as our democracy exists, it will require continual effort to maintain. And it will require intelligence and education, too. Dummies can't maintain a functioning democracy, not for long.

This is up to you and me. This is up to all of us. It's our fault (collectively) for the messes we're in now, and it's our responsibility to fix them. The Tea Partiers might be complete lunatics, but even they understand that much. How can we do less? No matter what, we can't give up.


* PS. Trust me, you'll never know enough about the candidates until you start to vote. The first time you vote, when you feel like a complete idiot because you don't have a clue about most of the races on the ballot, that will encourage you to pay more attention. It's been my experience that the act of voting comes before political knowledge.

And after all, you don't have to mark the ballot in every single race. You just have to vote, in every single election, no matter what. You'll feel good about it, you really will. And then you'll start paying more attention to such things. It's almost inevitable.