Politicians

Most Are Not Really Leading Us — To What Is Good

At the risk of sweeping generalization, politicians want you to be afraid — that’s how they keep their jobs...as the only ones who can protect us from all the bad things out there.

For decades now, the whole country has been arguing over what to be afraid of…the most.  It seems to have reached an unprecedented level in this one due to both the ubiquity of social media and the shamelessness of those leading the way.

Routine rhetoric like "they're coming for YOU..." underscores the point, which now includes the weaponization of patriotism (a favorite of fear-mongers). They stoke this dynamic when they mostly are just purveyors of fear, especially when cultivated through their sowing of chaos thru cult of personality.

Many (politicians) really don't respect the average citizen, even as they smile like a Cheshire cat and say "I want your vote".  And, maybe they have some good reasons in light of what appears to be some of our collective aptitudes, given the bowels of our consumerism (which they also promote by sucking-up to our money). They probably know more than we give them credit for about our short, national attention-span and how easily and quickly we swing between public narratives.

We could do SO much better, though, if things were truly about service rather than power.

Which may beg a question about the locus of power — do politicians enable power in the people or do people enable power in politicians?  Something right now seems a bit complicit in the mutually-inclusive dynamic of the whole arrangement.  We seem to be unwittingly willing to use each other (some are not so unwitting about it, as it is pure calculation and the masses are falling right into line).

At some point the stench will be high enough that we will recognize things for what they have become and demand leadership more than partisanship.  We clearly aren't there yet, but there a signs the tide may be turning — as this system will lock in on anything that's hot and just as quickly spit it out when it's not.

We just have to stop enabling the system — it feeds on us, on our more base (and less human) instincts.

Our leaders seem rarely able to be much better than we are.  So, IF we want better…we need to be better.  

It’s easy to say, we need to be better. But the challenge is to define what better is and what we are willing to do that’s actually better. For example, better is not simply the accurate analysis of what is bad or not good. Better is the constructive work of actually thinking about what is good for people, what they need, and doing the work. 

We can’t afford to leave it to politicians to come up with answers to those questions, as if they were the ones uniquely responsible for them. We can't dodge the issues by deferring to them.  We need to be the ones that are asking these questions and asking (forcing?) our leaders to help us achieve the answers that are needed. 

We need to find people who are both willing and capable of lifting us up to the higher plain of what actually is good, not simply the easier lower one of identifying what is bad. And, we need to be people who are working more actively at what we are for, rather simply what we are against (most anyone can do that). We need to be the ones that help make peoples lives better by working on the ideas and the frameworks that help people actually experience what is good. 

Politics has become largely the activity of pointing out what is wrong with someone else ideas. That's just not good enough and not really leadership.  Better ideas should lift us up toward the common good (not simply the individual good), rather than the laziness of claiming that we know what is wrong with everything…and everyone who doesn’t agree with us. 

Surely, if anyone’s ideas have merit or value, then it stands to reason that other people have equally valuable and good ideas (it’s at least possible), and perhaps especially because they are different than mine. It is not the exclusivity of one idea that can truly embolden what is good for a society; it is the respect and framework that accommodates the full range of good ideas, with full knowledge that any one of ours is at least incomplete. 

So, where are these kinds of leaders? And, when will we start leading ourselves again and not leave it up to the current version of our...fear-mongering politicians?

The answer really is found in where am I, because I can’t really expect someone else to do for me what I need to do for myself and for my contribution to the good of society.