Turn Pro
Posted: November 9th, 2005, 3:20 pm
Turn Pro
for release 11-09-05
Washington D.C
It's wonderful to see our political process in action. Yesterday Americans sallied forth to the ballot boxes and played out the grand pantomime of democracy. America loves a good race. That's why NASCAR is so popular. And the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500L And politics.
Imagine Monday Night Football seven days a week. And it's always between the Cowboys and the Redskins. That's American politics. Yes, we buy our tickets and we place our bets but do we ever ask ourselves as we cast our ballots for this candidate or that candidate or for this proposition or that one, whether or not we are making any meaningful choices?
Is your life going to be significantly different if you vote for the Plutocrats rather than the Oligarchs? I don't think so. The only people that really need to care about whether the Redskins beat the Cowboys are those that have money on the game.
The problem with politics is the same as the problem with all sports--professionalism.
Who runs our government? Lawyers. And doctors are popular these days (Bill Frist and Howard Dean both like to advertise that they are doctors), corporate executives (or their sons) and Professional Politicians (bureaucrats.) Jefferson would be spinning like a pig on a rotisserie in his grave if he could see what passes for democracy these days. The idea of making a career out of politics was repulsive to George Washington as well. They wanted to offer him a kingly crown but he saw himself as a surveyor and a soldier and a citizen/hemp farmer. Participating in government was, to our founders, a duty not a meal ticket.
But times have changed. A printer or a farmer or a factory worker has no time or means to be a politician. It's a full-time job. No more is an average but interested citizen able to play in the big leagues. It takes several million bucks to put a car on the NASCAR track. That's why they are plastered with corporate decals. Both sport and government have become professionalized to the detriment of both.
Sandlot baseball (where anybody could participate just for fun) has morphed into a manicured spectator sport where fabulously paid gladiators jack their bodies up on steroids and pump iron year-round. It's a full-time job. Oh, forget that it's a bit absurd that a society pays its teachers $30,000 a year, and it's short-stops three million. This is the professional world.
It is the same in politics as it is in professional sports. Football and basketball players are bought and sold by team owners and race cars are billboards for the logos of their corporate sponsors and I think politicians should be required to wear jackets like the NASCAR guys with patches indicating who owns them. (maybe not, the thought of Dick Cheney in a Halliburton T-shirt sort of gives me the creeps.)
But this is what happens when professionals take over. In much the same way as the government mob has legalized the numbers game by calling it the Lottery, they have also legalized bribery by means of 'campaign finance laws.' These laws provide a method for wealthy Olliecrats or Plutogarchs to buy lawmakers outright when the time honored tradition was to pay them under the table. It's a disgrace. When professionalism enters politics you get people like Karl Rove and Tom Delay who are creatures of the shady deal and the dirty trick, forever trying to Simonize their public images.
The Poet's Eye is looking to turn pro. But I know that would take all the fun out of it.
"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro."
--Hunter S. Thompson