3 ms·
I have a laugh every time I read this, but it's not a very good analogy for modern politics. You can't distinguish between good leaders and bad leaders quite a
by raquo 11y ago
I have a laugh every time I read this, but it's not a very good analogy for modern politics.
You can't distinguish between good leaders and bad leaders quite as easily as you can distinguish lizards and people. Especially when both kinds spend millions of dollars trying to convince you that they're good and others are bad. Not to mention that this story kinda assumes/implies that people would somehow be better rulers.
We didn't get to the current system in a revolution. It's not like it was designed to work well. All the laws that allow things like massive surveillance, civil forfeiture, gerrymandering, lying in official capacity, obvious corporate bribery ("lobbying", what a nice word), self-favorably changing elections rules for the next election – all of this has been created gradually over decades, often by different parties and people, each of whom put self-interest ahead of their duty to the people and walked away from the disaster at a leisurely pace.
Given complete lack of accountability of individuals properly positioned in the state machine, we will not see any improvements in how the state works. People everywhere are trained to think "if only we elect the Bernie Sanders of the day, everything will change for the better", then either of the two things happen – a) they get elected and don't fulfill even a tiny fraction of their promises, if not the opposite, or b) they don't get elected ("oh well, let's try again in 4-5 years").
Just to clarify, this is not a call to arms to overthrow the government or anything. It's kinda too late for that to work. And that would be grossly illegal. For some reason.