Politics is ridiculous

Column from December 10, 2009 issue

Were we ever to have perfectly balanced Houses of Congress, the country would shake itself apart, though not, as now, from laughing so hard. It would be from the strain of the two contending ideological forces, pulling in exact opposite directions.

Politics is ridiculous. The only reason anyone takes it seriously is the expense.

How opposite are the directions? Well, liberals and most Democrats believe that the Good Old Days really weren’t; that things are even worse now; and, watch out, just because the sky isn’t falling today doesn’t mean it won’t collapse tomorrow. Better throw some money at that sky.

Look, isn’t that a crack? It’s cracking, right there. See, I told you the sky was falling!

Conversely, most Republicans and conservatives believe that there was a time in America when everything was perfect, at least for white males, and that things can be perfect again in the future, if only we free the markets, drown the government in a bathtub and kill all the liberals.

The remarkable thing is, despite all the blood-curdling screams from both sides of the aisle, things don’t really change very much. We preach human rights, but often fail to practice them well enough ourselves, and end up trying to legislate both rights and morality. Also, America still leads the world in spending money and in spending money inefficiently. If you were going to choose a team captain for the world economy, you wouldn’t choose us. But we seized the reins about 1945 and began driving off in two directions at once.

It helps to understand how conflicted we are as a nation by examining the two sides’ stands on key issues.

War. Conservative generally don’t mind wars, and find the best policy is to shoot first and then shoot anybody who asks questions later. Liberals think the best war policy is to turn their guns in at the door, talk and talk, and then talk some more — even if the other guys already went and sank one of our destroyers. Still, both tactics seem to get us into wars, anyway, most of them coming with hangovers.

Money. Liberals want to spend other people’s money on different other people; conservatives would just as soon everyone kept their own money in the first place. But, in the end, both parties combine to spend more billions of dollars than Jimmy Carter has little liver spots. Philosophy doesn’t matter; policy does. When it comes to money, America is proving to be about as incapable of handling too much of it as the typical American family is at handling not enough of it.

Actually, the concept of “enough” may be the real problem. Consider…

The economy. Liberals think if there are only enough jobs, everything will be fine, and there will be enough profits. Conservatives think that if only there are enough profits, everything will be fine, and there will be enough jobs. Right now, though, no matter what you think, both sides have to realize everything isn’t fine. The only sure thing is, it’s the other party’s fault.

Take the recent calm and reasonable (sic) debate (sic) on the omnibus health care bill, which, as everyone suspected, really was written by an infinite number of monkeys working on an infinite number of typewriters. The genesis of this proposal illustrates how politics, and American life in general, works now: everybody is very good at loud talking; nobody is very good at silent reading. Now, with only 535 people to “convince,” Big Insurance, Big Pharmaceuticals and their ilk (like, I don’t know, Big Cotton Swab Interests), “lobbied” using millions and millions of dollars, to assure that a “compromise” (i.e., “unworkable”) bill would be reached that would only make everyone involved richer (except for the customers), so that there will be more money to lobby with (how about another set of parentheses?) next time, after Congress’s crew of monkey stenographers have really screwed things up. Again.

Conclusions? Government gridlock is not only entertaining, it’s inevitable. The whole shebang’s a byproduct of the system set up in the Constitution by our forefathers, at least nine of whom, remember, were not alcoholic slave owners. With that document as a guide, after all, a strong federal level has been able to weaken itself through bribery and corruption and general mismanagement and meddling, the states have found that they have the right to go bankrupt, and meanwhile, the Congress and the Judiciary battle over who gets to decide what is is.

To say this is an imperfect system would not only be gilding the lily, it would be gold-plating it, too. But, by golly, it’s what we’ve got!

Which is why we need 50-50 votes on everything. No matter what we decide, deciding just seems to make things worse. Perfect gridlock has yet to be achieved.

Once upon a time, there really were differences detectable on the bottom line, at least. These days, conservatives can spend money just as fast as liberals can, and they do. The Bush Administration had the record for a couple of years, now the Obama Administration is breaking it. (It was the other party’s fault, in both cases.) We can all sleep soundly knowing that the federal deficit will continue to rise far beyond the hearing of even the most budget-atuned guide dog.

It’s going to be a long winter. Someone pass me my Recovery Act check and that little brown bottle of magic there. No, the one with the blue mountains.

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