Meg Rifter: George Carlin- 'Maybe it's Not The Politicians Who Suck?'

Source:Meg Rifter- George Carlin, on American politicians and the voters who elect them.

"George Carlin's bit on voting and politicians."

From Meg Rifter

I partially agree with George Carlin on this. Our politicians actually do suck in way too many cases. I think that is obvious when you have a Congress that can’t get its basic responsibilities taken care of like gee I don’t know, funding the government that they are part of, or paying the bills that has been run up on the debt, which is what a debt ceiling extension actually is. Not an agreement to borrow more money, just to pay the interest on the current debt. 

Just the way our politicians treat each other would be an example of political sucking (to mix a political metaphor) is another example of how members of Congress in both parties treat each other. Like the majority not allowing the minority opportunities to offer amendments and other examples like that. But just in case people who aren’t insomniacs actually read this, I don’t want to put everyone else to sleep with what is called in Washington Congressional speak: language that only the House and Senate uses.

I completely disagree with George Carlin on his notion that non-voters have every right to complain. Sure, according to the First Amendment they do, which is all that they need. But for people to be taken seriously, they have to sound credible. And if you’re not doing everything you can to improve government and the least you can do is to bother voting, you can’t credibly complain about politicians who are on office now, because you were too busy complaining, or sitting on your ass at home, or at a coffee-house, perhaps watching celebrity TV all day, getting drunk, masturbating, whatever it might be and not voting. 

Had Democrats bothered to turn out in 2010 and 2014 anywhere near the numbers they did in 2008 and 2012: what Tea Party revolution? Republicans rely on low voter turnout to get elected and reelected. There are still more Democrats than Republicans in America. What Republican gerrymandering if Democrats held onto all of those legislatures and governorships in 2010?

I realize I’m coming at this from a Democratic vantage point, but here’s a newsflash: I’m a Democrat and I’m not saying this to put Republicans down, but Democratic voters don’t have much to complain about when they don’t vote for Democrats. Especially when their reasoning is that they don’t like Center-Left establishment Democrats and that the candidate, or incumbent is not in love with government and doesn’t have a new tax or government program to take care of everyone’s problems for them. Or is not as Far-Left as the Green, or Democratic Socialist candidate. 

Democrats, won back Congress in huge numbers in 2006, because Republicans didn’t bother voting. This works both ways. If you don’t do the very least that you can do to improve government and get the best possible people to represent you, which is bothering to vote and the person you most not rather see wins that office, whose fault is that? All the opposition did was show up and win and beat a party that didn’t bother to vote.

If you don’t like the current field of candidates, run yourself, or encourage someone who you think would be a good candidate to run and then work for that person. Assuming that you caught them when they were drunk, or high, or had a gun pointed at their head (that wasn’t filled with water) and agreed to run for that office. 

But a big reason why we have politicians who suck is because we have voters who suck themselves and maybe we should require all voters to pass a sobriety test, or eye examination before voting. But other reasons why we have politicians who suck is because we have voters in name only. People who are registered to vote, but who don’t bother voting at all. And as a result we get politicians, because of a low voter turnout who would’ve lost badly had we just had a decent voter turnout for that election. Who represent a small faction of the country and wouldn’t have won any other way. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on Blogger.