The corrupt “two-party system” that has a chokehold on the US seems to operate on something like the following delusional thinking:
DEMOCRATS
- What I think my party stands for is very good.
- What I think the other party stands for is very bad.
- When my party messes up, it’s excusable because of the good they’re trying to do. Mistakes do happen.
- When the other party messes up, it just proves that what they stand for is very bad.
- I can trust what my party tells me. If it were not so, they would have told me.
- I cannot trust what the other party says. It’s corrupt to the core, whether it comes from error or intentional deceit.
- I can trust my party to tell me what the Constitution says and means.
- If I were wrong about this, I would know it. If there were a better way than this, I would know it.
REPUBLICANS
- What I think my party stands for is very good.
- What I think the other party stands for is very bad.
- When my party messes up, it’s excusable because of the good they’re trying to do. Mistakes do happen.
- When the other party messes up, it just proves that what they stand for is very bad.
- I can trust what my party tells me. If it were not so, they would have told me.
- I cannot trust what the other party says. It’s corrupt to the core, whether it comes from error or intentional deceit.
- I can trust my party to tell me what the Constitution says and means.
- If I were wrong about this, I would know it. If there were a better way than this, I would know it.
THE TRUTH
A. The leaders and elected officials and bureaucrats and civil service workers of both parties thrive off of the corruption in the US.
B. Both parties claim allegiance to the Constitution when it suits them to do so, but neither does all it could to support and defend the Constitution.
C. The system thrives off of its negligence to prosecute the wrongdoing of the players. And this simply feeds the fire that keeps numbers 1-6 above in play.
D. They keep us divided on purpose, pitting us against one another, when the PRIMARY conflict — the one that really matters — is between them and the Constitution they publicly swear to uphold. If that Constitution needs changing, why don’t they change it, rather than cheating it?
E. There are indeed differences between us philosophically, and these differences are deliberately fed and structured so as to keep the division viable. As long as it’s roughly a 50/50 split, the deadlock seems readily believable. “If only we could get control of all three branches—-THEN we could really get some reforms done!”
F. There is no provision in the US Constitution for political parties at all — and much less, any provision for there being only TWO of them, nor for those two parties having a chokehold on the Congress and on the electoral system.
G. Americans don’t read about the Constitution, and don’t really care what it says, as much as they may talk about it. (See point 7 above.)
H. Most people are content to live under points 1-7. The system works for the masses, who are content to live in it, even though it may be considerably aggravating to them. They are not apt to think it through, nor to push for much reform.
I. The outliers, who DO think about such things and who study the Constitution for themselves are very few in number, and have very little power under the Constitution, because the Constitution was based on the since-debunked assumption that most people will act rationally in their own best interests. (This idea is known as the “standard economic model”.) The framers assumed that the public would be as thoughtful about the process as they themselves had to be while designing the structure of the system.
J. Meanwhile, the officials keep taking those Oaths to support the Constitution, but in almost every case, it’s a huge lie, for they have no intention whatsoever of keeping it. And the public knows so little of what the Constitution says that they wouldn’t know a violation of it if it bit them in the hiney. See #7 above.
K. It’s similar to a good-cop/bad-cop system. The Democratic side of the artifice and scheme seems tasked with leading the way in moving away from the Rule of Law under the Constitution, and the Republican side is tasked with making a show of fighting this corruption, while generally failing to stop it much. (They have a “victory” occasionally, but on the whole, it’s a losing battle, and the Conservatives eventually end up working to conserve the corruptions they were speaking out about a decade earlier.)
L. The people — most of them — find this system very believable, and are quite willing to occupy themselves with the thoughts in items 1-7 above. They will not think their way out of it.
M. The majority of them might well appreciate it (in time, after the dust settled) if the system were completely reformed, but someone else would have to do it FOR them, for they are not apt to figure it all out for themselves, and much less, to do any work to that end. Indeed, what CAN they do legally but to vote and to protest and to petition the incorrigible and vast government? But voters tend to vote, concerned about RIGHT NOW, and not with the big picture in view. Indeed, they do not spend much time considering the big picture, but are content with the view in items 1-7 above.
N. So yes, our government is corrupt and most certainly could use a reform so sweeping as to rival the reform of a total abolishment and rebuilding of the government.
O. But that government thrives off of the delusion of the masses, and continues to feed and maintain that delusion, restructuring it as needed to keep the machine running — always trading in emotions and biases and lies, rather than in virtue, justice, and sound policy.
P. And why is government like this? Because you can’t get rich being a public servant and protecting the Rule of Law under the US Constitution. It’s about having money and power. And if the OFFICIALS were virtuous, the corrupt PUBLIC couldn’t keep voting themselves funds from the public treasury. So the pandering continues, along with the corruption that results from it. The corrupt leaders prey on the corruption of the public, who themselves are not sitting at home thinking about the PRINCIPLES behind all this, anyway.
Q. It’s a very base system, and far from the honorable, noble thing it is held out to be.
S. It keeps its secrets and protects its crimes. It commits atrocities from time to time, and covers them up. It molests those who seem to threaten the system too much to be risked or tolerated. And it has great powers of coercion, highly organized and highly effective.
T. It would take a LOT of public servants willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause to turn this corruption around. Meanwhile, lacking that, this system is likely more vulnerable to failing under its own weight. But to counter this, it continues to build the US empire across the world, drawing more from from others, to keep from bankrupting itself. It has no charter for this, of course, but don’t expect the citizens to notice this. (See point #7 above.)
U. The majority of the citizens claim to be Christians, but do not follow the teachings of Jesus well enough that they end up hating all this corruption and becoming the kind of self-sacrificing people who are apt to change a corrupt system. They end up being highly trained in giving lip service to Jesus while not living as he taught and demonstrated they should live — which situation is strikingly like the way they handle the Constitution. Jesus sees all this, but he does not MAKE them repent. Instead, repentance is for volunteers only, and very few among the people are volunteering for this “narrow way”.
V. Other than the *original* teachings of Christianity, what other religion is going to result in the kind of non-corrupt public we need and the kind of non-corrupt public servants we need? Islam? Judaism? Taoism? Hinduism? Confucianism? Buddhism? The American churches have not cared to discover the original teachings of Jesus in the scriptures, and to put them into practice. Instead, they have made just another worldly religion out of what used to be the one true religion — as if Jesus weren’t real after all, and were NOT going to judge them for taking on the name of Christian in vain.
W. Only people of such high character (like Jesus) can withstand the temptations that the wicked bring to bear against government officials. If we can’t get enough of those people, both in office, and in the voting booth, there’s no hope of doing much better than the current morass. A valiant president, if we can get one, can be tolerated by the system until he has termed out — and if not, he can be impeached/convicted or assassinated — and once he is done in office, all his reforms overturned. He might make a splash, but he can’t create the tidal wave necessary to wash away even HALF of this great delusion that plagues this country.
X. The people who actually understand these things, and who can resist the temptation have attained these high virtues not BECAUSE of the institutions of which they are members, but IN SPITE OF THEM. They are too few in number, and have no special leverage in this system, although their philosophy is superior to the going philosophy of the system. And this system is not going to reorganize itself so as to give those people more power in the oversight of this government.
Y. And so it is that this system is exceedingly worldly, based on delusion, and REQUIRING it to keep functioning. A righteous, reality-based people would reject the system, but there are far too of those, by four of five orders of magnitude.
Z. A righteous king could save us from this, but he’d pretty much have to kill or imprison the sitting government to do it. And then what would we do when he dies and the king’s stinking son takes over? So, the only real and long-lasting solution here is to make the PEOPLE themselves more righteous — MUCH more righteous. And how are you going to do that with the fake Jesus we get at church, or with the government itself educating the citizens at school?
