> I fundamentally distrust these people (on both sides) I always try to understand which votes they are trying to buy. Seriously. If we model politicians as

> I fundamentally distrust these people (on both sides) I always try to understand which votes they are trying to buy. Seriously. If we model politicians as individuals evolving through an evolutionary algorithm it becomes very clear that their fitness function has very few variables. Money and votes. Not sure what else. Once they learned that votes can be had with promises, rather than execution, all was lost. Politicians are now experts at manipulating the audience for votes through promises (which are nearly always false). They also manipulate the audience through incredibly creative naming of bills and programs. Every single one of them sounds amazing. And yet, nearly every time you actually study one there's plenty to be horrified about. I have no clue how we fix this. If the fitness function that drives this species does not include an evaluation of actual results (valuable, useful, positive, consistent long-term results) they will never have the evolutionary pressure required to mutate in a direction that benefits the people and the nation. They are so deep into self-serving and party-serving territory at this point that we would have to make massive changes to the way things run if there is to be any hope of correcting the type of person who goes into politics and their behavior once at their respective throne.