Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress, but I repeat myself.

                                                                                  ---Mark Twain

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lived from 1835 to 1910, so his above words...whatever year he made them...refer to the state of politics in his own time, well over a century ago.  In a way, they're reassuring, reminding us that regardless of the tomfoolery and deceit that seem to dominate Congressional politics today, this has pretty much always been the case in Washington.  On the other hand, the "idiots" in Congress, both in Twain's day and ours, tend to be reelected over and over again...so what does that make us, the general population that keeps sending them back for term after term?  Personally, I don't believe that those serving in Congress, be they in the Senate or the House of Representatives, are idiots...even the ones who at times make idiotic statements.  But they ARE perverting the intent of our founding fathers when they established this representative republic.  It all comes down to the concept of "primarying" in which a populist...even demagogic...element of a politician's own party boasts of enough fanatical voters to topple them in the next primary if they don't tow the line to their peculiar ideology.  The result is that the more extreme elements of each party tend to either control who gets their nomination, or...much more prevalently...control the behavior of those already in office, who are afraid of getting on their bad side.  Sometime in the future I plan to write an article about the "rabble", that is the masses of people in any society who tend to be more autocratic, hung up on symbols, and less educated in the civics of how our government is supposed to function.  They are easily manipulated, as recently we have seen mass hysteria about the COVID-19 pandemic...particularly in the areas of masks and vaccines, Trump worship, and widespread denial that Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.  For elected politicians to kowtow to the basest of the "base" reveals them not to be idiots, but rather as lacking in personal standards of ethics and integrity.  And I'm not giving the Democrats a free pass, either...too many of  the rank and file seem to be imbued with the notion that mass protest marches are somehow "democracy at work" while regularly skipping election after election in which there's no emotionally-gripping candidate or issue on the ballot...resulting in state legislatures across the country being dominated by Republicans, even in several "blue" states.  And what's happening nowadays with the put-downs of moderate Democrats is completely unacceptable to me...