Imagine what half that money could do to help the U.S.' unemployed, or people on the verge of homelessness, or if it was poured into primary school education. What a novel idea! Pay teachers. Stock food banks. Solar and wind energy installations. Better mental health support.
So many options. Just pick one or two.
But of course that will never happen. It seems that many people who tend to go higher in politics are sociopaths, because all they do is pad their own pockets at the expense of their constituents. They make all kinds of promises in order to get elected and then backpedal.
For those politicians who are actually honest, or who attempt to do good and hold others accountable, the system is made to break them. Take a look at President Obama: almost everything he has tried to do has been blocked by the opposing party. The stress has caused him to obviously age ten years for the six years he has been in power so far, and his family has come under fire through no fault of their own.
Its not quite as bad in Canada, but there are times I wonder. Especially in Quebec when most politicians are more concerned with the survival of the French language instead of addressing the real issues.
If we could take the politics out of politics, maybe things will improve.
I wish we could. I wish truth in the political world was based on actual truth instead of statistics. Instead of actually fixing things, or being honest about what the cost and hardship of fixing things is, our government just likes to put a bandaid on it, until everything is covered with a hundred band aids that must be peeled off one by one to get to the rotted core. But nobody wants to peel anything off and look at...well the truth.
ReplyDeleteThoughtful Post.
A friend of a friend put it this way:
ReplyDelete"Here is all you need to know: It's dominated by two parties, the feckless and the reckless. One party wants to make the government a completely owned subsidiary of Wall Street, and the other party wants to deliver lip service to the needs of everyone else. Both claim to be different, yet once in office they both work hard to achieve the same thing. Therefore, America is a nation with the greatest percentages of its citizens behind bars, the most military actions against countries which dare to support a government that doesn't kiss its ass, and of course the highest taxes for those making less than a million a year and the most tax loopholes for those making MORE than a million a year. Police recently arrested a group of people for the crime of feeding the homeless, under a law which claimed that such people would be "encouraged" to stay homeless if they had enough energy to find a job. America is a nation of, by and for the wealthy and it's getting worse. No wonder Canada has decided to close their doors to anyone with so much as a parking ticket on their record.