Politicians’ Privilege
By
Cognitive Dissonance
Imagine for a moment you work for a small or medium company, multinational corporation, utility, regional bank or even a local, state or national government or agency. You have a decent job with average pay and benefits, but for whatever reason you feel it may be time to move on. Doesn’t matter why, just that you wish to do so.
Time to hunt for a new job.
A competent manager (yeah, I know, but stick with me here) fully understands that at any point in time, 10-20% of her/his employees are casually, or seriously, looking for employment elsewhere. It’s called turnover and the HR department is quite familiar with the concept. That very same manager also knows some amount of ‘work’ time and resources will be devoted to (some might say stolen by) their soon-to-be-gone employee during their job search.
I’m not saying it’s right, just that it’s a present-day reality. It’s also one of many reasons why your work computer, and you, are increasingly under surveillance by your employer. One must always remember (at least according to the Supreme Court) we surrender certain inalienable rights when on the premises and/or in the employ of our paymaster.
The situation would be considered all but indentured servitude in a less polite society. The goal of the master class is to promote the fiction of freedom and justice for all, not to provide actual freedom and justice. Just because the house slaves live in more comfortable conditions doesn’t alter the underlying situation.
But I digress.
I strongly suspect if the presently employed job seeker were to publicly, and loudly, declare she was seeking alternative engagement, then proceed to take time off from her present job to seek that new and improved situation (all while expecting to still be paid) the old job would disappear in a heartbeat. This is a near certainty, unless of course the manager is incompetent, a distinct possibility.
The good news is the now unemployed job seeker can devote that much more time to securing new gainful employment, assuming (of course) any prospective employer would wish to engage someone so obviously disloyal and reckless. Funny how this type of behavior impacts present and future employment opportunities. Again, this isn’t a judgement so much as a fact of everyday life.
However, if you are someone who has been elected to public office, especially, but not exclusively, at the Congressional or Presidential level, it is not only common, but expected, for the elected ‘official’ to take periods of time off from their present ‘job’ to try and convince the general public to elect them to a new, better paying, more powerful position in government.
Think about that for a minute.
While I could make all sorts of arguments why this is not only good, but necessary, I’m not sure I could do so with a straight face. The presumption and premise behind a politician campaigning while presently ‘employed’ (if employed is even the appropriate term to describe elected politicians) is that since they could be, and sometimes are, called upon to perform their official duties at any time of day or night, there technically isn’t any ‘official’ time off during which they could seek alternative employment.
And they certainly couldn’t seek higher elected office without letting others know they are seeking higher elected office. In order to be elected, one must publicly declare they seek election. Therefore, it can’t be accomplished discreetly or quietly, at least not without some sort of slimy corruption involved.
While I could competently argue any time spent away from the DC den of thieves is good for everyone, a solution might be to limit presidential and congressional campaigns to three or four months so the abuse of time (and power) is limited. Or to outright ban any campaigning for higher office other than the one presently held. Most certainly term limits need to be applied.
Of course, these laws must be passed by the very same congressional critters who want no part of these laws. So, the likelihood of that happening is essentially zero without a great deal of pressure applied by the general public. And since the public is now being told they too can be paid from the public purse (socialism for We the Gullible) the corruption just moves on down the line and the spiral to the bottom accelerates.
I suppose my central objection is to the underlying premise that higher level politicians ‘serve’ the public good and are indispensable while doing the good of the public, thus they should be afforded more wiggle room when deviating from social norms. While one might suppose this was once the case many decades ago (not likely) the Politicians’ Privilege enjoyed and abused by modern career politicians is egregious and outrageous.
While laws have been enacted preventing politicians from using the public purse to campaign for higher office (mostly because of obvious corruption and social outrage) they still take time from their official duties to climb the political career ladder. Just look at all the national senators and representatives, city and state elected officials who were, and still are, engaged in presidential pursuit.
Especially when the state primaries begin, check out how many times these presently employed politicians shirk their official duties (measured via missed meetings, congressional votes or appearances) in their pursuit of more power via higher office.
The true purpose of this short diatribe is to question accepted norms when it comes to political elections, as well as the politicians themselves. The public narrative presented by the political class of selfless public servants slaving away for the public good is so far from actual reality, we might as well believe them to be magic than to accept their self-serving stories.
If we want better solutions to the escalating socioeconomic disaster we’re mired in, we’d better start asking better questions, particularly of ourselves. Political Privilege is not taken, but bestowed upon the politicians by the people…even if only via apathy and self-inflicted victimhood.
The struggle for freedom must be ongoing in nature. Freedom is not a thing that is won and done. It’s a thing that must be sought when missing and continually defended once won.
Regardless of what we want to believe about Congress, the President and the political class in general, whether it be the propaganda taught to us in grade school or the fantasy narrative promoted by the mainstream media, the political class is corrupt to the core and will not reform unless forced to do so.
With apologies to Albert Einstein, whose definition of insanity was to do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, a more practical and publicly practiced definition of socioeconomic insanity is doing nothing over and over again while expecting different results.
So long as politicians of any and all political parties are bestowed privilege to purse their own self-interest via our apathy and indifference, nothing will change and things will only get worse until we are little more than a banana republic with nuclear weapons. Of course, “We the Victim Class” will claim we had nothing to do with it and could do nothing even if we tried. We simply can’t expect any more from we mere victims. It just doesn’t get much more pathetic than that.
Here’s a few things we can do on a daily basis. Turn off the idiot box, which these days is just about any glowing screen, particularly anything that is telling us what and how to think. Engage some critical thinking and question everything, beginning with our own beliefs which we solemnly claim are derived from pure facts and absolute truth.
Nothing could be further from reality, and until we acknowledge we are constantly propagandized and manipulated, nothing will change that improves our own personal situation nor that of our country. We are relentlessly and continuously lied to, and we willing accept those lies as the truth rather than push back and resist. It really is that simple, both the problem and the solution.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming already in progress.
09-30-2019
Cognitive Dissonance
