Left in the Cold

We have emergency services that we rely on for various crisis from the extreme to the mundane. We need police to ensure people don't speed on the streets our kids play on, and for other issues related to the security and safety of our communities. We need Ambulance/ EMT professionals for times when our loved ones or ourselves are in need of urgent medical attention. We need fire fighting services to handle fires and the other emergencies they respond to and that we as a society rely on them for.

We need people to tend to our infrastructure. We simply cannot allow our roads to crumble and become riddled with potholes. We pay good money to ensure they are tended to, as we need them to get to and from work, and so our kids can get to and from school without the threat of a traffic accident caused by poor highways and byways. We need bridges maintained and up to date. Water and sewer systems need to remain functioning, safe and up to the standards we expect as a taxpaying public. We need our electric grids of course so the lights and power stay on and uninterrupted in the comfort of our homes.

As contentious as our relationship has become with them, especially those serving at the national level, we rely on our elected officials and representatives. Their job should be to look out for our best interests, and, like transportation officials, etc, do what is in the best interests of those they serve.

We can't expect people to be perfect, and without flaws, weaknesses and faults. Who among us have none? When is the last time you weren't a little suspicious of someone that wasn't? Even those we consider “holy” have baggage, and can be corrupted.

No, we want normal people to represent us – ordinary everyday people like ourselves. But we want them to be people suited to the great responsibility of the care of large numbers of their fellow Americans. We want them to feel they are accountable to the many people that look to them, rely on them and count on them to do the right thing while we go tend to the duties we have taken on in our everyday lives.

We need them and there is a measure of selfishness on our part regarding what we expect from them. But that is the job. There are people best suited to be accountants, carpenters, scientists, medical professionals, food service professionals, computer technicians and so much more. When a person chooses the path of a politician they should be a person reasonably suited to the profession meaning they should be they should take the idea that they serve all Americans seriously.

The problem we have today is we have two very old parties that have been the same two parties we have had for over one hundred years. We have a political system that may have as many parties as the American public wish. Yet, the two parties work jealously to cut out and stamp out any spark of new hope for new parties as they arise. They view their job now, not as an opportunity to serve their fellow man as Americans helping the majority of Americans, but as pure opportunists that are in the business of managing the nation's political system.

Now it's something for them to horde, and they, more and more often, view the public as a threat to their dominion over a political system that was never theirs in the first place. They are our servants, acting as lords. They are democratically elected representatives behaving as owners that do as they see benefits them the most personally, along with the interests of their being one of the two sole parties Americans are allowed .

Those two parties remain the only people that end up as administrators over our political system, and they do so by forsaking what is good for the majority of Americans in favor of steering their legislation and other actions they take in the directions wealthy interests that donate the most money to their political campaigns want to see them take.

In order to make us complacent, just around campaign season they drum up phony indignation that lasts until just after Election Day. Lies we buy and complain about and increasingly aren't willing to just eat. I mean we pay these guys and most of the taxes this nation's government collects in revenue come from us, not the wealthy. We are beginning to learn this, we are starting to see it and we are watching their lies and transparent about faces in real time as the information age keeps us abreast of the day's latest developments in ways never before imagined.

We now know that the majority of Americans neither identify as Republicans or Democrats, though we are forced to vote for one of the two or nothing. How fair is that to us? Where is our representation? Is this some third world nation where people are repressed and only allowed the choices of political party wealthy owners of corporations wish to see? The kind of choice easiest for them to manipulate?

The two parties send foreign aid to nations we have grown sick of helping, that are increasingly bastions of more trouble than they are really worth, and that basically tell us to go rot when we ask for things in return for all we give them of our hard earned dollars. They vote for wars before ever doing proper check to ensure we are fighting for good reasons, I mean it took a lot for us to assent to enter the fight against the Nazis in WWII.

Yet, sending our boys and girls in uniform into a second theater of warfare seemed as though it were nothing for the politicians to sign off on when signing off on Iraq. More young Americans killed? Oh well, it wasn't their sons and daughters. There was a heck of a lot of oil there, but have you seen a dramatic lowing in prices at the pump in the ten years since we invaded Iraq? Is your life easier now? How much of the profits from the oil companies, that made out like bandits from the invasion, or similarly defense contractors went into your pockets? How much of the profits from your everyday sweat and toil went right into their pockets? Who was supposed to be ensuring that didn't happen? When is the last time Blackwater or Exxon cut checks for the American taxpayers paying them back for all the money, we spent funding their plunder in the sand?

In a CBS Poll that came out yesterday it was revealed a full 80% of Americans disapprove of the job Washington is doing. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57576433/poll-80-of-americans-unhappy-with-washington/?pageNum=2) They aren't representing us. They are representing themselves and their own interests. Automatic spending cuts? America's credit rating downgraded by the same people that rated junk subprime mortgage bonds as high as possible so Wall Street could continue with its scam until the inevitable bubble burst? Had they not done that, would what we were forced to hand over to Wall Street in 2008, and after, have been as much?

Who cares about you and me besides you and me? Not Washington. But, two or three additional parties to the two we now have would allow for compromises and negotiations to continue when one party folded their arms like babies and made childish, bitter pouty faces. The jobs we pay them six figures for could still continue as we deserve, and as they should by all rights. We don't pay them to sit around eating steak, funding theocracies and driving around in limos with our taxes. We pay them to work in the best interests of you and me. I mean seriously, the same two parties since before electricity? Surely America deserves better than to be left out I the cold while a tiny, tiny group of people run our great nation.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.