tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024711323687773226.post8714484135761162211..comments2023-10-03T10:29:55.199-04:00Comments on Pastor Larry's Desk: Criticizing Politics Pastor Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222433820323866852noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024711323687773226.post-17096605903436035052013-10-28T10:13:10.929-04:002013-10-28T10:13:10.929-04:00Justin is right. To even make it to the primary r...Justin is right. To even make it to the primary round you have to have spent years "in the political trenches" doing dirty work and proving you are a guy that can be "depended on" to march in line. You're tainted before you're ever even elected. <br /><br />One obvious (to me at least) remedy is term limits. As you said, politicians #1 concern is getting themselves RE-elected. They only spend 1/2 their time doing the people's business. The rest is fund raising/lining up support for their next campaign. But if they couldn't have a "next" campaign.... :)<br /><br />SLowandslowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08608734222483888884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024711323687773226.post-437618168925348402013-10-28T10:06:15.751-04:002013-10-28T10:06:15.751-04:00I think most honest and competent statesmen just c...I think most honest and competent statesmen just cannot survive the political culling process of election. They can't get campaign funding because they have too much integrity to bow and beg to oligarchs with promises of quid-pro-quo. Meanwhile, they make the PR climb almost insurmountably asymmetrical when they won't throw their opponents' mud (full of lies and distortions) right back at them. This unfairness is exacerbated when we all live basically from cradle-to-grave under a magnifying glass, so that the tiniest perceived misdeeds and character flaws of even the finest people can be hyped into a political epitaph.<br /><br />And it's not their fault, or really even that of their opponents. This is the system that our cognitive biases created. It's a terrible system for selecting someone for a job in administration and statecraft, but a wonderful system for reinforcing the appetites of the electorate. It just happens, though, that the people who are successful in manipulating that system are also psychopaths, cynics, crooks, liars and hypocrites; those are the traits that favor their survival in the political arena.<br /><br />If we want good, honest, competent people in government, we need a system that favors their selection (it's really rather Darwinian, actually).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18031193345338955682noreply@blogger.com