A Strange Political Disconnect

I heard some interviews with Michael More about his new movie "Capitalism, A Love A Story", and although I have not seen it yet it got me thinking about how far out of wack our political debate is.

I am continuely struck by how both Democrats and Republicans seem to ignore some serious flaws in the practical applications of what each side claims is it's core ideals.

Lets start with a core belief that is near and dear to the hearts of Democrats.

Big Business has far too much control over our government. Lobbiest actually write the legislation. This results in corporations continually getting the upperhand on the average joe.

The Democratic solution then goes something like this. We need more government regulation to make sure that that big corporate interests don't squash the little guy. We need to make sure that government gets the power and authority it needs to carry out this critical oversight role.

Can anyone else see the craziness here? Dems admit that Big Business controls too much of the government, but then they turn to that same compromised government to be the solution. How can we trust a government which is systematically in the hands of Big Business to create laws which do anything other than protect Big Business? How does this make sense?

Republicans take the other side of this argument, and it goes something like this.

Special Interests have far too much control over our government. Lobbyiest actually write the legislation. This results in far too much regulation and too much government. Business thrives under a small a government with as little regualation as possible.  We need to pass laws that de-regulate industries and remove barriers to economic growth. This in turn will create more higher paying jobs and therefor help the average joe.

This argument fails misserably as well. Conservatives always forget that the biggest Special Interest is Big Business, and again since Big Bussiness control the legislation, what are chances that they will pass effective laws? Zero!

Republicans have missed the obvious fact that Big Business actually Loves big Government. The more power that government has the the more control Big Business is able to exert through it's control over the governemnt. This is why the government grew at a tremendous rate when a Republican president was in the White House!

Why do these disconnects persist? There are probably a lot of reasons. Here are a couple that I can think of.

Each side thinks, if we could only elect the right people, we could get the job done right. This assumes that you have a functioning government not in the hands of Lobbyists. We need to face facts. As long as Lobbyists exert the kind of control that they do, very little meaningful change will ever occur.

The politcal machines associated with each side, are quite happy with the current state of affairs. They have no reason to change. 

There is a tremendous amount of distractive marketing that is perpatrated by all sides with the obvious goal of keeping things as confusing as possible. If people are confused they will just go to their default position, which is conveniently handed to them by the which ever politcal party they already associated with.

These disconnects are a real threat to our culture, society, and country. It is our laziness that has lead us to us to where we are. We have received exactly what we asked for!

It is time for us, as a people to wake up and take back the reigns of control from political machnines and their lobbyist bedfellows. We need to question the default positions of our default political party and force them to answer real questions about real problems. We need to stop being distracted by non-issues and contuniously drive our leaders back to the practical problems that face us.  Stop waiting for you party to win, or for the other political party to loose. It is up to us!

It is after all as, President Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address "...a government of the people, by the people..."

Related articles by Zemanta

Fortune's Stanley Bing: The Big Bailout of '08: Hindsight Is Blind (huffingtonpost.com)The Biggest Myth of All that the Republican and Democrat Corporate Representatives in Congress Sell the American People Is that they Support the American Dream (iflizwerequeen.com)Marshall Fine: Movie review: Capitalism: A Love Story (huffingtonpost.com)