Public Servants?

Our elected officials, from president on down, love to claim that they are privileged to be our public servants. Horseshit!

They are not public servants. They are politicians. I know, I know, I'm using a broad tar brush here. But look around people. Consider the used car salesman analogy. Tell me which politician you would buy a used car from?

The comparison between advertisements and political campaign statements is revealing in their similarities. Both assume that we as citizen/consumers are idiots, and as such can be led to believe whatever they claim.

Why is this? Clearly politicians want to get elected to a great job, and now and then need to get re-elected to that same great job. They'll do almost anything for that. They will lie, cheat, pontificate, spread false rumors about their competitors, hire people whose job performance ratings will be based on how they manage to suppress the vote of their enemies, and increase the votes of their supporters, living, dead, animals or fictional characters.

Am I cynical? You bet; and so should you be.

When will we as a people wake up to the realization that we have been had? In "Old Europe" they're wondering why the streets of DC, and major US cities, are not filled with hundreds of thousands of irate people. Europeans are still scratching their heads that we actually re-elected the guy who is the successor to the original Butcher of Baghdad.

The only defense against the opinions of those abroad that Rumsfeld came up with was to call them "Old Europe", and anything they contribute has become irrelevant.

In a court of law, which thankfully we have, "Joe Friday's "just the facts mam" rules. It needs to be so in order that we not condemn anyone based on a bias. I do feel the need to encourage the discouraged to hold their own course, deny the liars their great jobs and demote them, (that's how they would see it), to ordinary citizens. Here's where the hypocrisy is most clearly exposed. The so-called public servants have actually behaved and operated as if we, the voters are their servants, subject to their self serving decisions, not ours.

Too many politicians who actually believed in the higher values and morality of democracy, have, in succeeding generations come to believe that they know best what is in the interest of their constituents. "I know best" got corrupted by the the desire to get elected to, or keep their great jobs.

After all, where else can you say most anything you want with impunity, and have it be only recorded in some kind of record, which you can later claim was taken out of context?
And where else could you work just two or three days a week, and get the best guaranteed benefit package available anywhere on earth--- - health care, no deductibles and no co-pays for $35.00 a month?

So, who are the public servants?

Leanderthal
Lighthouse Keeper