FALSENESS
How can some people pretend to be someone other than who they really are?
It happens all the time, it seems, especially in the area of politics. So many leaders of the people come to feel they are, indeed something special, even unique. They forget to represent us and instead come to rule over us. We pretend we don' t know that as long as it seems to serve our advantage.
If, then, anyone is to be chastised for any such infringement upon the rights of others, it should be, logically, those of us who permit our politicians to waver and to become subservient to the rigors of one of the most difficult occupations in all of mankind's many tasks - that of ruling over others.
Those who stay with it often do so by default.
I seldom come across a “dedicated” statesman in my reading. They are there, to start with, for the purpose of survival. Of having a job, bringing in the where-with-all for family and or a special way of life which seem,for a time, to meet their needs. Many drop by the wayside. A few are wise enough to get out before they becoming steeped in the enticing brew of potential gain they think they see ahead. Far more of them become underlings in the elaborate organization it takes to keep such a system going. A few stay on because the picking seems easy and they can do it effortlessly. They seek ways and means to keep it that way.. Who wants to give up such a comfortable situation?
..
I keep thinking of one young man, in particular, whom I admire to this day because he had the courage to get out when he realize the Eden-like garden of political life was anything but what the school textbooks had said it was supposed to be. He found it to be, in reality, entirely different! He entered state wide politics and did well from the start, but he did not have to be there very long to realize that the textbook version of political life and what it actually proved to be were different things entirely. .He quickly came to know what we call “back scratching” was fundamental. You favor my action and I'll favor yours. Multiply such little favors by the hundreds and merely merely trying to remember them becomes impossible.. To honor them becomes a burden; a pagan site upon which a politician offers his soul.
Our best leaders, you see, might well be those very people who have stayed out of the political areas or, perhaps, those few who left it purposely. It is ironic, I suppose, at we have come to view these truths as being self-evident. We know many of the things which are wrong about our political system as it exists today, and yet we do not have the courage to try doing anything really constructive about changing it ...if we knew how. I wonder too if, in a political sense, we can anticipate a time when we might have “A Great Awakening” experience era?
Much depends on what we really want, of course.
We are not to sure on that score. The present system gives us what we think we want which, at times, discourages definition. We are proud of what it has been on some occasions and there are far less commendable systems running rampant in the world about us.
Let's not knock it, I say, but let's try to keep it fairly clean and reasonably honest. If you consider all politicians as puppets on a stage remember you are back stage pulling the strings.
A L M. December 13, 2002 [c618wds]
