Fragile Democracy And A Political Theatre
Politics is an important activity of an organized society. In my opinion, it means to be able to have my voice heard in my local and national government and in brevity, every form of interaction involves some form of politics.
There is a deep concern about the democracy and the state of the institution and politicians play a significant role in this concern. Politics is dirty as people mention and the politicians cannot be trusted. Politics is probably the career choice that is looked down upon the most, why is that? to quote a comic book line here, “with great power comes great responsibility”, only to realize that politicians are watched and scrutinized at every step and phase to ensure that they keep up to their responsibilities.
Politicians have to be thick skinned and be able to take insults, criticism and blame, and have to be able to justify their actions to the masses. Why would anyone want to go through all that one might ponder? I personally have two thoughts running in my mind, one to bring about a positive change in their communities, cities, states and country as a whole and the other is that, the concept of power is very desirable. Wars have been fought over the love of power and control. The truth is painful and people seldom want to experience pain, so they rather vote for someone who keep reinforcing what they already believe. Politicians are basically actors and one aspect of it is the politician game. They are all selected to play a role and we don’t really see who is pulling the strings at the backstage. There is a whole school of thought out there, and most of what we see is a puppet show. The put on a show in order to attract the crowd, and appease different groups with varied needs and viewpoints. A political theatre establishes when different politicians play different roles and their main goal is achieve power and influence. Nothing that could potentially come in the way of these politicians, say violence, bloodshed, lives being lost, causing misunderstandings between different groups, sects and making people suspect themselves. All this chaos can be started under false pretense if it helps them to achieve their goal.
For instance, the Philadelphia elections riot in 1742, where the two parties the Quakers and the Anglicans, were competing to gain political dominance and William Allen the leader of the Anglican proprietary party was widely believed to have instigated the riots.
We don’t really want to see those in powers to take ethical shortcuts but our defenses are fragile. However, we all want to be united by a common cause even if it means we support the wrong groups. If we think about it that there are so many of us in comparison to the few elite puppets on the stage, that is if we all stand united we can actually work towards being a better nation with far less issues that we face today.
A government is not a popularity contest and there definitely should not be an electronic college. We have an antiquated system and we need a serious reformation in place but all these new tools in place like social media are not being used to instantaneous ability to community as a common and united group. The big issue is that there are all these gigantic groups who are in the position of power and they have the ability to influence the decision making of people who are playing the roles of running our country and making laws for us. The administration of our country is corrupted, they suck out all the resources from us, they make laws against humans that come from a different land, put people of color behind bars labeling them as criminals. We are all responsible in some way by entertaining ourselves with these actors on an arena enjoying themselves on our blood, sweat and lives.
