The Dirty Truth About Politics

I just finished watching the wonderful 1948 film, "State of the Union". Think "The West Wing" in black & white. It's about an honourable, down-to-earth American industrialist, played by Spencer Tracy, who gets recruited to become a presidential candidate for the Republican Party.

He starts out with great conviction to speak his mind and always be completely truthful about his intentions if elected president. But then the political operatives coerce him into realizing that if he doesn't "play the game", he'll never get nominated as the candidate. And playing the game means concessions - to union leaders, to businessmen, to "ethnic" leaders, and endless other special interests. Before he knows it, he's had to give up all of his principles and is sliced up so thin that should he ever become president, he'd be constantly preoccupied with paying back those favours ... and not much else.

What's so incredibly interesting about the film is that it could have been as easily set in today's political climate as back then ... without one word of the script being changed. This got me depressed. Then I realized that if the language were changed from English to Latin, it could have been as easily set back in Rome. That got me really depressed!

What a sad and sickening irony that the average, honourable, hard working citizen abhors such behaviour and yet this has likely always been and will amost certainly always be "the way things work". For if one candidate won't suck up and promise the world to a group then that group will take their money & support to another candidate that will. And the sheep-like electorate will get convinced by whoever has the larger advertising budget.

This got me thinking about professional sports. We tend to cheer for the sports team in our city. We convince ourselves that our team is battling another city's team, that our team is fighting for us. What nonsense. Professional athletes, like professional politicians, are mostly in it for themselves - the salaries, the pensions, the power. Anyone thinking otherwise is smoking something stronger than cigarettes.

That's why I shall never join a political party and will forever remain a pragmatic libertarian: minimal government, though a realization that enough is necessary to stop stupid people from destroying themselves and us.