Political Rhetoric

I’m rather sick of political rhetoric and individuals who take a firm stand for or against something based on a tag line without thinking about the issue or looking into it. I fully admit I’m not as versed in what my individual representatives are doing as I’d like to be, but I do try. I contact them. I subscribe to their newsletters (invariably they end up unsubscribing me, which tells you something – they don’t actually want to keep their constituents informed.) I tell them what I want (to which, if it goes against the stance they’ve taken… well, that’s usually when they unsubscribe me from their newsletters.) I try to give some thought to what’s going on in the political world around me and then, when I do, I find myself confronted by individuals on Facebook using the word “demon” to refer to whichever political party they are opposed to.

C’mon guys. That’s empty rhetoric. It does nothing except set up an us vs. them dichotomy while failing to explore the real issues of the day or come up with workable solutions to the problems around us. More than that, it feeds into the hands of politicians who benefit from keeping the public ignorant of their goings on.

Let’s be clear: The majority of politicians in office today do not care about you as an individual or even as a member of a group. They have little concept of the day-to-day struggles you face. We have reached a point where our political leaders – where are government – is almost completely disconnected from the every day lives of those they govern.

In the last presidential election, the “down-to-earth” candidate resided in a home worth more than $4,000,000.00 in a metro area where a nice middle class home cost a tenth of that amount and the other major candidate was unable to tell a reporter how many houses he owned. This at a time when more and more ordinary citizens were facing foreclosure of the only roof over their family’s heads.

Instead of helping out the taxpayer, the government chose instead to bail out corporations and mega-banks, who used the money not to help the people but to secure bonuses and corporate retreats for its executives. This should tell everyone where the real power base is in this country. The government is not working for the betterment of the ordinary citizen; it does not represent us. Instead, it represents corporations and special interest groups to us because those are the entities which finance their campaigns and decide who is and who is not elected. We the people are just pawns in the game who are sacrificed at little cost to the major players on the board.

In the past, when the gap which separated ruler from ruled became such a chasm, revolutions happened. When, in Russia, the tsar and his nobility attended galas while covered in glittering precious jewels while the country people were unable to feed their children, the Bolsheviks rose to power and Nicholas II and his beloved family were executed. In France, when Marie Antionette was told the people had no bread and she said “Let them eat cake” the ruling class lost its heads.

What I wonder these days is if the American people, when faced with not an oppressive government but with an unresponsive one, still has the passion that first drove our ancestors across the Atlantic to settle the New World, then fueled the Minute Men in their fight for freedom, sent pioneers across the mountains, and finally put a man on the moon, or if those fires have grown cold. Are we now nothing more than spoiled, self-indulgent children who expect others to solve all our problems for us or does the independent flame still burn within our souls?

Honestly, I hope we don’t have to find out, but I worry that we will end up with little choice.

What it's all about

The biggest problem with writing, with being a writer, is not learning craft well enough to be published. It’s not coming up with ideas. It’s not submitting or editors or agents or any of that.

The biggest problem with writing is balance. It’s somewhere between being a hermit and living life to its fullest. To be a writer – whether you are writing educational newsletters, greeting cards, short stories, or articles for magazines – is to examine the human condition. To do that, one must live. You have to get out there and allow yourself to live, love, and laugh, to know pain, sorrow, and regret. You have to be.

But to put words to paper, it is necessary to pull back, close the door, stop taking calls, tell your family that you are most definitely not talking to them this weekend, and lock yourself up in your own head with nothing but pen and paper (or laptop and keyboard) and to turn over the stones of what was in order to use that to move others.

Finding the balance. That’s what being a writer is all about.