Are politicians inherently bad?

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Aristocles
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Aristocles »

TimLear wrote:
cynicallyinsane wrote:To gain political power, a person must lie, cheat, and manipulate people. Are politicians inherently bad?
Politicians are salespeople. They only do what it takes to make the sale. Its the people they throwing the pitch to that determines what pitch they throw. If a politician is in charge of a nation full of ignorant people who preferred to being lied to, then they will lie to get the job.
If a politician is in charge of a nation whose population is full of integrity and prefers outstanding results over lip service, you will end up with outstandings leaders.

It not the leaders at fault, its the people below them.
Politics, like other forms of ignorance, leeches upon human vulnerability for distorted means. The ignorance on both sides appears to need emphasis, so it can aspire to become more philosophical. The philosophical aspect is where positive results appear to flourish.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Hereandnow »

Again: If they're liberal democrats they're good; if they're conservative republicans they're bad. Are there no conservative republicans out there itching for a fight?
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Ormond
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Ormond »

cynicallyinsane wrote:To gain political power, a person must lie, cheat, and manipulate people. Are politicians inherently bad?
Politicians are a mirror of the public. We look in the mirror, don't like what we see, and then yell at the mirror. Politicians are inherently realistic.
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
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Aristocles
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Aristocles »

Ormond wrote:
cynicallyinsane wrote:To gain political power, a person must lie, cheat, and manipulate people. Are politicians inherently bad?
Politicians are a mirror of the public. We look in the mirror, don't like what we see, and then yell at the mirror. Politicians are inherently realistic.
Our obsession with mirrors appears to lead to disingenuousness; politicians survive feeding off our psychological vulnerabilities.
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Ormond
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Ormond »

I was a political activist for a few years, and one of my jobs was arranging public meetings which often included politicians as speakers and guests.

To make a long story short, the typical meeting involved many members of the public making adamant statements!!!! on behalf of the cause regarding how "somebody" should do something!!!, but um....

The "somebody" was never them.

300 people would show up for the public meeting. Smile for the TV cameras!

3 would show up to do the work the meeting was intended to organize.

In other words, generally speaking, the public is full of you know what. The politicians know this from long experience, and so they tend to talk to us like children, for the simple reason that we typically act like children.

Of course it's surely true that some politicians are slimy. They get elected, again and again, because we don't really care what happens, we just like to whine.

We the average person are the owners of our country (assuming democracy).

The buck stops with us.

Everything is our fault.

Politicians are just employees.
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
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Aristocles
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Aristocles »

Yes Ormond, I agree we need to be held accountable for our vulnerabilities. I am mostly attacking politics, with the demostrative aspect reflective of particular politicians. I do take it further, critiquing any actual accomplishments being attributed to any actual politicing itself. Accomplishments appear to be from a higher place of reflection. But yes, it appears we need to be hornswoggled and hoodwinked to open our eyes and appreciate progress.
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LuckyR
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by LuckyR »

The way I see it, back before mass media, sure the rich were powerful, they "bought" politicians who did their bidding, but since family connections, personal charisma and endorsements were the keys to elect-ability there was a greater number of professional elected officials who actually cared about the job they were elected to do. Currently, because of the cost of mass media, it takes so much money to be elected that politicians have to sell their soul to the wealthy and powerful, thus the percentage of elected officials that care about the job they elected to do is much smaller (it is NOT zero percent, but it is close).

So to answer the OP: no politicians are NOT inherently bad, but the current political system encourages/requires politicians to cater to special interests, thus a majority of them are bad.
"As usual... it depends."
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Scribbler60
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Scribbler60 »

Ormond wrote:... the typical meeting involved many members of the public making adamant statements!!!! on behalf of the cause regarding how "somebody" should do something!!!, but um....

The "somebody" was never them.

300 people would show up for the public meeting. Smile for the TV cameras!

3 would show up to do the work the meeting was intended to organize...

Politicians are just employees.
This is my experience as well.

I spent some time as a contractor working with a local mayor, helping him write speeches, organize events etc etc. And I found this to be exactly the case.

One event was a public input session on tax rates. During the event, members of the pubic were adamant that they would not stand for a tax increase. But at the same time they insisted that, for instance, the library be open extra hours, they wanted faster snow removal service, they wanted use of the public pool to be free and a whole host of other demands... and they also insisted that there be no deficit.

Needless to say, when the budget was finally presented, some (not all) members of the public were outraged at the property tax increase (I forget the amount, I think it was under 2% but I can't be sure).

What I found most interesting about the whole situation was that it was those who really should know better - the wealthy, and business people who have to deal with the realities of budgets all the time - that whined the loudest. They wanted all the extra services but balked at paying for it.

To paraphrase Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, "The fault is not in our politicians, but in ourselves."
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Hereandnow
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

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But Ormond and Scribbler60, you're talking about politicians' shortcomings. It's like saying ice skaters a worthless because they continue to fall down. The job and the calling, if you will, is not inherently bad, and there as certainly some good politicians (though I'll admit, they're not my kind of people--too much of who they are is on their sleeve and nothing of, no time for, an inner life; and then there are all the concessions they have to make to appeal to the constituency that make them into fatuous, cloying idiots; and my favorite is that it seems to be part of the job description to be head over heels in love with the sound of their own voice making them seriously egomaniacal; oh yes: let's not forget how scheming and manipulative they have to be to defeat their opposition, always looking to exploit a weakness, magnify a fault, make bad arguments seem like good ones, which is called sophistry, a word for clever lying; there's more). If they do pursue the agenda they say they favor, and you like this agenda, then, faults aside, they are good by a good standard (which would be impossible if actually Being a politician were a bad thing, as is suggested by 'inherently bad').
Now, of course, it does strike me that there is a problem with the above: a politician as such, in so far as s/he is a politician, is in the power struggle, a predator of sorts looking to pounce, connive, cajole, win in a zero sum game. But as a servant of the people, it is quite a different game. Hmmmmm I guess it goes like this: Politicians ARE inherently evil because the political process itself is an evil competition. Government officers can be good if they don't yield to corruption and carry out the mandate of the constituency. But a third thing, the ideology, stands apart: social and economic agendas vary, and whether one is good the other bad is a matter of endless argument. I, for one, am a flaming liberal, but a realist: Bernie could never get elected.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Sy Borg »

It's all very well to blame the public but many are working their tails off to cover rising accommodation costs in difficult employment environment. Exhausted from work and family duties they get their information where they can. To that end, media moguls kindly provide those hardworking regular people with convenient of self-serving conservative propaganda to absorb in their downtime that masquerades as news.

The system benefits more from extracting productivity from them than giving them the information they need to make an informed decision. In the end, of course, the rich - including politicians - are the same as the rest of us. History is full of toppled regimes being swept away by "the new broom" but, once the honeymoon is over, the people find they've installed a new group of exploiters in power.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Rederic »

"The secret to being a successful politician is honesty. Once you've learnt how to fake that, you've got it made." Groucho Marx.
Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves.
It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Ormond »

Hereandnow wrote:But Ormond and Scribbler60, you're talking about politicians' shortcomings.
Speaking only for myself, I was not discussing their shortcomings, but their realistic appraisal of those they serve.
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
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Aristocles
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Aristocles »

Ormond wrote:
Hereandnow wrote:But Ormond and Scribbler60, you're talking about politicians' shortcomings.
Speaking only for myself, I was not discussing their shortcomings, but their realistic appraisal of those they serve.
I see the realistic aspect only stemming from the more humane philosophical aspect of humans. Sure, a given politician has this capacity, but they are rarely encouraged to use it.

I understand a politician may have taken on an entirely different connotation in Aristotle's day, and Plato appeared to attempt to capture a good politician could only be a philosophical one....

If you look at pre-Jacksonian America, you notice the less political aspect in the early presidencies. You see less decadence and abuse of human capacities, aside from killing the English, French, natives, etc. Once the borders of America were more secure, then political parties began to illustrate the more inherent inbreeding/conflict of "civil" issues accelerated, seemingly hand-in-hand with the industrial revolution affluence disparity. Really, anything that aims to segregate humans, without emphasis on the more important human similarities, leads to bad things. Politicians appear to be the vehicle of the less mindful, the barrier to more rapid philosophical harmony.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Hereandnow »

Sounds like you're saying, Aristocles, that politicians who are promote nationalism are the best. The divisive ones the worst. It could be argued that this singularity of thought, this tendency toward what is harmonious, and desegregating (to borrow your word) is the kind of attitude that makes for the worst of societies. This statement that segregation without "emphasis on more important human similarities" has some measure of truth, but it leads in the direction of a notion called cultural literacy, which was forwarded by E.D. Hirsch some years ago. His thesis was that of cultural assimilation: there are things good citizens should know, things that bind our mentalities to promote the unity in society. He even put out a dictionary, as i recall.

Dangerous? A little, iof you consider how it plays out politically as a promotion of a single set of cultural values that should dominate and those who don't have it not quite good citizens.
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Aristocles
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Re: Are politicians inherently bad?

Post by Aristocles »

Hereandnow wrote:Sounds like you're saying, Aristocles, that politicians who are promote nationalism are the best. The divisive ones the worst.

.... a promotion of a single set of cultural values that should dominate and those who don't have it not quite good citizens.
No. Philosophers, promoting humanism would be best. Nationalism is odd. Humanism would not dominate and lessen others, etc
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