There's NOTHING Wrong

What is Wrong with Government Today?

The US population as of November 2010 identifies itself as 36% Republican, 34.7% Democrat, and 29.3% as not affiliated with either major party.  

At the beginning of 111th Senate, there were 48% Democrats, 49% Republicans, and 2% independents, with 1% vacant, and in the House of Representatives we had 54% Democrats and 46% Republicans.

We also in 2010 (Gallup) 42% of the population who consider themselves as Conservatives, 35% who consider themselves Moderates, and 20% who consider themselves Liberal.

So, what is wrong with our Government today?  Why is it that they seem to never get anything done?  And why is it that the majority of US citizens are unhappy with their governmental representatives most of the time?

Well, I would venture to say there is nothing wrong with our system.

What we have right now is a split between about 35% each of Republicans and Democrats, with another 30% of the country not wanting to go on-record as claiming either hot mess of a political party as their own.

Most of our Republicans are Conservatives, and as such they really don't want there to be anything that Liberals or Democrats might consider as "progress" passing as a law.

Our general Conservative Republicans, after all, can be summarized with some of the following, disturbing statistics.

These folks are twice as likely to own guns than the rest of the population, with the main reason stated for ownership being to protect themselves against crime.  This means that about 27% of Conservative/Republican households have guns, even though only about 2% of all US citizens will become the victim of a violent crime in their lifetime.

Our Conservative Republican friends also have founded the Tea Party movement, best known for not caring about really silly issues like nuclear disarmament or the environment, preferring to focus on pressing things like all those welfare mothers who keep having abortions on the taxpayers' dime…  And of course also generally found to be incapable of spelling, and 72% of whom are not sure whether or not Hawaii is in fact a State.

About half of our Democrats are Liberal or Moderate, and they can't seem to agree on what progress IS.  Some think everyone should have "free" healthcare, having not yet discovered that there is no such thing as a "free lunch".  Others are proponents of gay marriage, the vast majority of which are not in fact homosexual, but can't pass up the opportunity to bait the Conservative Republican crowd.

And then there are those 30% who just don't want to be pigeon-holed, who have a giant anti-authority streak, or who just don't really know enough about the "issues" to feel like they can make an informed decision.

Of this 30%, quite a few are older Americans who consider themselves to be Conservative, and generally vote Republican due to the misconception that the average Republican candidate wants to protect their Social Security benefits, as if he or she has any idea what it costs to buy food, medicine, or an "average" American home.

Several of them are the highly educated, the intelligentsia of our nation, who like to vote for Independents because God forbid, what other way are they going to show what free-thinkers they are, thus once again proclaiming their intellectual superiority to the rest of us poor working slobs.

And then some of this 30% are disinterested armchair activists who like to support a cause on their Facebook pages, but who find that any actual effort to understand or espouse some political concern is just too much to ask of them, if it's going to involve such nonsense as getting out of the house to vote or reading something other than the Horoscope that pops up on their home page on the Internet.  

These are the youth of America, who have discovered that while complaining loudly is very easy, actually doing anything to improve your position as the folks who are doomed to chronic unemployment, who will never be able to own their own home, whose first child will be born while they still live at home in their parents' basement, and for whom Social Security will no longer exist.

So, what we have is a spread of the socio-political and economic map of the citizens of our country that literally stretches from one end of the spectrum to the other (see chart).

So, gentle reader, I ask you…  Where in this chart do you see anyone getting, say, a two-thirds majority on any particular Congressional vote?  If we take the four most populated groups and hope they can agree on a Health Care bill, then what we are saying is that Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans are going to have to agree.  Clearly, this isn't a generally safe bet.

So we begin at the left of the chart, and by the time we have acquired 67% of the vote, our Gay Liberals and Welfare Moms have to agree with most of our Liberal Republicans.  So scratch that -- let's begin at the right.  For our quorum here, we need Tea Partiers and Reactionaries to agree with Conservative Democrats.

You can see that, no matter what we try to accomplish, not only is a bill going to be very bland, but if it is to pass at all, it's probably going to truly appeal to half the Representatives who voted for it, thus leaving fully one third of their constituents unhappy and another one third of everyone whose Representative didn't vote for it, also unhappy.

What we have here is not a tyranny of the majority or of the minority.  We have a tyranny of the Polarized.

And many of you think our Government has ceased to work, however I would propose that it is working in EXACTLY the way it ought to, given our voting preferences.  We can't find one single issue in Congress today, that two thirds of the American people can agree upon.  Therefore, there is no majority consensus and nothing new is enacted.

Some might go as far as to say that this is in fact a problem.  We are in the midst of a recession, suffering from unemployment and have massive concerns with our financial institutions.  We are hostages of our own energy consumption, possess enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy the World ten times over, and have proud veterans living on the streets.  We are losing ground to China in our economy and education.  Some would say this needs to be fixed!

I on the other hand feel that, if you want a truly diverse population in terms of race, religion, gender, political views, intellectual achievement and financial means, this is exactly what you are going to get.  It's simply the socio-economic and political price of true, American-style diversity.

Sure, we could equalize the finances of the country by upping taxes on the wealthy, and using that money to invest in our manufacturing and educational futures.  We could even try to level the playing field by upping the minimum wage and ensuring adequate health care for all.  We could EVEN try to alleviate the differences in education by reinventing our school systems so that at a minimum, students would know how to spell "morons" and would recognize the names of at least 48 out of 50 States.

But all these things, my friends, cost money.  Money that could much better be spent on foreign wars that not only perpetuate our dependence on foreign oil and loans, but that provide unlimited opportunities for companies whose major share-holders sit in elected office.  Money that could well go to sealing off our borders with Giant fences a-la the Maginot Line of French fame in WWI.  It would take a major re-distribution of wealth from, well the wealthy to the not-so-wealthy.

And guess who gets to vote on THOSE issues?  And what percent of their constituents, then, would be happy with the changes?