According to various surveys, members of Congress are among the least popular creatures in the known galaxy. They’re statistically less popular than head lice and gonorrhea. They’re less trusted than used car salesmen and crack dealers. Surveys show them as more despised than migraines, traffic jams, and maggots. They are universally loathed and derided for being dishonest, dysfunctional and deeply incompetent. These feelings are entirely warranted. We are teetering on the edge of calamity, and all these clowns do is tussle over who gets to be the one to finally drive the train over the cliff. My children were born into a bankrupt nation run by deviants and sociopaths. Congress is largely to blame. If a greater collection of self obsessed buffoons and petty narcissists have ever been assembled on planet Earth, I’m sure it must have been in Sodom and Gomorrah. And we now how well that worked out.
So far, you likely agree with everything I’ve said, even if you think I should be nicer about it. Yet, of those who are on board with any criticism I can throw at Congress, most won’t agree with this part: We need to vote out the career politicians. All of them. Both parties. They have overseen the destruction of this nation — as well as a few other nations — and they need to be fired. I’m not talking about the ones who just got there. Many of them are just as atrocious, but there are a few young bloods who seem to have a real desire to change things. The rest? Screw ’em. Why do we even need to discuss this? We’ve become so drained of our revolutionary spirit that millions of us will actually vote for congresscrooks that have done nothing but spend money and destroy liberty for DECADES. They need to be fired. All of them. ASAP.
Are you still with me? Maybe you’re shaking your head ‘yes,’ but when push comes to shove will you actually cast your ballot against the oligarchs? Even if it means the other party might win? Even if it “splits the vote”? Even if it seems politically risky?
Here’s what drives me absolutely insane: On virtually a daily basis I will find myself in a conversation with a fellow disgruntled citizen. The exchange will go something like this:
Fellow citizen: “Man, Matt, things are bad. You know, I think we might need a revolution”
Me: “Well that can be avoided if we just use the ballot box, vote out the long term incumbents, and vote in some fresh and ambitious liberty lovers.”
Fellow citizen: “Yeah that would be nice. But there’s no way to get rid of some of these guys.”
What?! You just speculated about an armed overthrow of the government but then dismissed the possibility of simply voting for different people? That’s like if you said you wanted to climb Mount Everest naked and I countered by suggesting a clothed jog around the block, and you scoffed at my idea, calling it “unrealistic” and “dangerous.” A recent poll revealed that a full 29 percent of Americans think an armed revolution “might be needed.” How is that possible in a nation where Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Charlie Rangel still have jobs? How could anyone dream of a violent fight for freedom, and then go vote for Lindsey Graham? How can we so desire change, yet allow Barney Frank to hold office for three decades and then retire with a pension?
This is why I can’t stomach all the talk about “term limits.” A survey a few months ago showed a staggering 75 percent of Americans in support of term limits. Bull crap. These 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 year tenured congressmen don’t just sprout out of the ground like mushrooms. They don’t crawl from the bowels of the Earth like sound-bite spewing demons. They are voted into office. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Have you ever said you’d like to have term limits? If so, have you recently voted for someone who has been in office since The Dark Side of the Moon went gold? If so, you don’t want term limits. You want Rulers and Kings, and that’s what you’ve got.
Don’t tell me that voting doesn’t “work.” We’ve never tried it. At least not recently. This thing where we stumble into the booth like zombies every few years and cast our ballot for the establishment candidate — that’s not voting. That’s just a stagnant and hollow tradition that results in nothing and changes nothing. The elites remain, and they remain because we choose to keep them there. Period.
Why are we doing this to ourselves? Saint Paul had an answer: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Someone engrave that and hang it on the wall at every polling station in America for the next election. I also think this phenomenon can be blamed on the usual suspects. Collectivism, ignorance, fear, cowardice. I guess all of those things are one and the same.
Like it or not, Congress is a reflection of the American people. The anger we harbor for them is really anger at ourselves. These politicians should be unemployed, many of them should be in prison with the other murderers and thieves, trading cigarettes for extra packs of Ramen Noodles. Instead, they’re up on Capitol Hill, trading your child’s future for power and influence.
End the madness. Vote out the elites, or stop complaining about them.
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