Our system is seriously broken, and identifying any action which will do anything to help the problem (beyond the “mental masturbatory” effect of making us feel like we’re doing SOMETHING) is very difficult.

Run for office? In a country of negative campaigning taken to the level of art form, very few of us could run an honest campaign and be elected on merit of our positions. Hell, I doubt many of us can say with any certainty what the positions are of any of our candidates. Certainly I try to stay on top, and I’ve been surprised often by how someone turned out in comparison to the story I thought I understood about them.

You no longer frame your own story, you simply set up a battle where you try to frame your opponent’s message negatively while preventing him from doing the same to you. And forget it if you experimented with drugs or rampant sex in college, or have a history of depression, or ever hired anyone to do any work for you who might not be a legal resident of this country.

Getting a message out there doesn’t work. I’ve lost faith that getting out the vote works, inasmuch as I no longer believe that the official tally of our elections (at least the major ones) in any way reflects the actual tally of votes cast, to say nothing of the will of the majority or even the majority of legal, legitimate voters.

No, the only things I can think of that would have any real chance of changing things involve sinking to the level of those I would fight against. Getting really good at lying and cheating. Learning to hack into the voting system and change it to MY liking. Practicing to become a sniper. Clearly any of these COULD make changes, but in the process, you would become as bad as those you’re fighting against, and what is the point of replacing one corrupt government with another?

And don’t fool yourself that you can fight back with their tactics but maintain your integrity, I don’t believe it. It’s a primrose path, a road to hell paved with good intentions. Each step down the path of evil corrupts your soul a little bit more, so that by the time you accomplish your goal, you’re no longer fit to fix the very problems you got into it to work on in the first place.

My wife has suggested that she and I start a new political party, get a lot of other disillusioned folks and see if we can create a groundswell. But even if we could, even if we had any idea how, and even assuming (a longshot at best) that we could get an honorable candidate elected to a high office, with the first taste of success the sharks, smelling the sweet chum of power, would be sniffing around, working their way into the ranks, and pretty soon we’d have a party as bad as the major ones, the idealists who started it ousted from their own seats of power by people who aren’t at all interested in making the system better, only at attaching themselves to an up and coming power center.

All of that said, I still salute Ken for trying. I hope he proves me wrong, and is successfully able to run a clean campaign, win a high office, and help to honestly fix the system.

But I have a hard time motivating myself to the near herculean task against the overwhelming paucity of chance of success, and I suspect that’s probably true of many others as well.

Liam.

This does not compute with me based on the basis of common sense, where the 73% were polled it seems if they had a negative view of congress they would translate that into a vote.

Really these polls are skewed by the main-stream media to say what they want them to say, I could not say really anymore if the elections are on the up and up??????