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I would like to offer another take on the words of Joe Scarborough.
He seems to be having issues with the current administration and the Republican Congress culture of misstep and failure.
To me this rings a bit hollow. It appears that his angst at his compatriots making him and his purported ideology look bad is more the impetus for this rather than admitting that the reigning tenets of the Republican philosophy puts them at odds with voters. These are principles in place for 30 years, not 6. The dismantling of our political process and the very country itself started with the resurgence of conservatism, not with a few johnny-come-latelies.
He is critical of poker playing? Well, Scarborough must be a poker player himself, and not a very good one, because here's the tell:
How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power.
To this, I would say to Mr. Scarborough that, although he makes an effort to see the larger picture, he misses the point:
If the "teeming masses" need convincing that anyone deserves to stay in power, then those in power, regardless of party, simply don't deserve to stay in power, Mr. Scarborough. And any person of any intellectual honesty should be able to, without feelings of disloyalty to one's own party, disavow those individuals remorselessly at the next election. What the Republicans and politicians in the very general sense fail to understand, and of which groups you may count yourself among the card-carrying membership, is that exploitation of ideological differences don't put food on the table of Joe and Jane Q. Average. It does not keep them safe. It does not educate their children. The only thing it does, Mr. Scarborough, is allow people who are consumed by their own ideologies an illusory feeling of satisfaction or detestation, which also is of no value to a society which, by necessity of its charter, MUST be tolerant of conflicting views.
Mr. Scarborough, the purpose of government can be argued all day between people with widely different interpretations of the mandate. We can look at it as strictly constructionist or infinitely pliable. We can argue the merits of interventionist foreign policy, or the separation of church and state. We can wax rhapsodic about environmental custodianship. We can cause a flap about the implied right to privacy and whether or not the FCC is in a state of perpetual overreach or if it is protecting assiduously the innocence of youth. But all of these things are immaterial. Every last one. These are ideological differences which, though interesting and worthy of argument, are not the prime mover of our political system, nor should they be.
There is but one concern important to any government that claims to be of the people, by the people, and for the people:
Have the people, in both the general and specific sense, been adequately served by those whom they elected to office in the manner that they've asked them to serve?
All other, and I repeat, ALL other questions of governance are fully immaterial. Since the majority of politicians view their Beltway stints as an extended paid vacation and couldn't give a hang about the general welfare of their constituencies if their will to power is disturbed by it, I am not really impressed when one of the "insiders" has the epiphany that government, after wrangling its ideological concerns, making sure the proper pork is passed out, and slagging off its opponents in the popular media, must actually DO something for the people.
There is a country out there right now, divided, scared to the point of paranoia, and bleeding cash from the eyeballs while politicians do nothing by play Nero as Rome burns.
Maybe if some of you pols actually tried to serve, rather than concerning yourself with the philosophical content of the American mind and turning every dissenting voice into a thoughtcriminal, Republicans wouldn't find themselves in the fix they are in.
Maybe if you viewed us 'unruly mobs' as legitimate adults rather than the screaming children who don't know what's good for them you'd believe they are, you'd realize that the current Republican mindset of the 'father as disciplinarian nanny-state' you've attempted to construct isn't only out of step with the people of this country, but is genuinely insulting to them.
All through your combination dissenters-screed-cum-mea-culpa that you've voiced still gives one the impression that it isn't the ideological intolerance that is the problem, just the execution. That's another way of saying We're Not Wrong... We Would Have Won Had We Scored More Points. And that, my dear Mr. Scarborough, just ain't good enough for me.
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