Business as Usual.

After reading a few papers on the ongoing debates, and notably how Hillary Clinton has gone from "sure-thing" to "maybe-not," I kept thinking about statements that I've said previously. Namely, I do not think politics is very important. In fact, I think politics is basically a game that the masses play to keep themselves entertained while truly great people do thing behind the scenes.

Stay with me here, try and name five grate politicians. Hell, name ONE great politician from the last one hundred years. Name a politicians who changed things. Name a politician who made things much better. Name a politician who changed the way the world works. You can't say Teddy, he was over 100 years ago. FDR doesn't count because he didn't change the world, he more or less fixed a bunch of problems caused by OTHER politicians. If you even think about saying Reagan I'll slap you.

Now try and name five great scientists. Architects. Artists. Writers. People who have a constant, lasting impact on the way we live our lives. You could fill volumes with these great men and women. I have said many times that I consider politics to have a single, critical role. Politics exists as a steward of freedom. Nothing more. I know, I know. I sound like some jack-off libertarian.

Well, alright, I sorta' am. Still, never has great change, when attempted through politics, succeeded. It always starts, is advanced, or finishes with great private people. Politics exists to make sure the masses don't get in the way of these advances because the masses are stupid. If the masses had their way, we'd likely still be burning witches and whatnot. The masses are usually terrified of great advancement and would try to suppress freedom to make sure they don't happen.

Government and politics should be singularly concerned with freedom and actions that have an impact on it. It should openly recognize its own unimportance and use that as a springboard for discussion on the things of great importance that can be facilitated with good politics. Sadly, as I mentioned, politics serves the double purpose of giving the masses something to do and talk about. Or I should say, about which to talk. And of course, this means any politician who actually tries and express his action's unimportance will never get elected.

I feel that I haven't made my case enough, so look at recent history and the things which are discussed in politics. Discussed with great fervor I might add. They are, semantically, identical to events that happened twenty, thirty, seventy years ago. It's the same damned words being said by different people. Politics NEVER learns from the past and is doomed to forever repeat it; drug war anyone?! The History Channel ran an interesting series of between-breaks shorts that recited a quote that sounded as though it was being said by someone today, and revealed after a few seconds that it had been said by someone some absurd length of time ago. It was then I realized that the Iraq War is Vietnam all over again, when it became impossible to differentiate the quotes. Same nonsense, over, and over, and over.

I mentioned that politics should only ever concentrate on freedom, and I think that's true. In an ideal world, or I should say a progressive world, that could be different. For example, nationalized health care. Politics should concern itself EXCLUSIVELY with the ways freedom is affected by such a system. For example, we lose the freedom to spend the money that would go to increased taxes, but we GAIN the freedom of never having to worry if we could afford a doctor or not. The job of politics is not to worry about the system, since that is scientific. Something like that could be reduced to cold, hard numbers and statistics. Systems are mechanical, freedom is not. It's biological and flexible. It can not be reduced to numbers. Would the freedom of universal health care trump the loss of the freedom to spend our money?

That is a political question. Politics should answer that question and, after deciding one way or the other, turn the entire affair over to the Mentats, or something, and have a solution. Politics should perfectly define the problem and not try to come up with a solution. Since it is easy to grind out mathematical answers to perfectly defined problems. Our forefathers obsession with freedom was well-founded. It's an obsession that's dearly needed today.