THE TRADITIONAL POLITICIAN IS ON ITS WAY TO IRRELEVANCY

This is one prediction I feel so sure that I am willing to go on a limb: politicians as we have known them will cease to exist.

Oh, sure, they still will be around for a few more election cycles. The waning and diminishing importance will come painfully and full of sorrows…mostly for the political parties who are not apt at learning lessons fast enough. Let’s face it few of us like change and it is hard to adjust to new things, new ideas and changes in the political arena are no different. However, most vulnerable are the conservatives because they are by their own definition opposed to change; it is part of the ideology to keep the status quo and to protect the special interests they represent.

The days of smoke-filled rooms where party bosses met to decide the fate of the country are a thing of the past. To start with you can’t smoke anywhere any more, to follow by one very curious thing that the Tea Party has accomplished and perhaps the only positive change they have brought us: to defy the party bosses and get in place nominees that represent their ideology…as misguided and askew as that may be. Much to the detriment of the Republican Party the Teabaggers have hijacked a lot of the functions and the priorities.

But what is happening is that the American people are no longer disengaged, aloof and distracted. The old tactics, talking points and lies are not working for the most part. There are of course some segments that will still believe anything Fox tells them or will get their impetus from an asshole like Rush or O’Reilly. But they too can count on their days being numbered and suffer the same fate as Glenn Beck who has not only been discredited but had to high-tail it into obscurity.

There exists a visceral repulsion for the politician that gets elected by promising and taking the constituents for granted; then when that politician got to Washington he was already in the pockets of special interests and no longer representing the people who elected him/her. It is not unique to Republicans although more common, Democrats are engaged in that dubious practice as well.

A fortune worth of advertising, most of which negative and filled with half-truths will continue to be spent by special interests and the wealthy even anonymously; however, it is getting to the point where all the money in the world is not enough to buy them the elections. The reason for this is obvious: people are awake, aware and distrusting and will be better informed in this and all future elections.

When the Governor of Wisconsin was elected he had promised to work for jobs and to bring back prosperity; then once in office he backed away from all that and began a scorch-earth effort to decimate the middle class and obliterate labor unions…he followed it with measures meant to disenfranchise voters and the results were disastrous not just for him but for the Republican Party across the nation. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. The people of Wisconsin took to the streets to protest and then we saw the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement after that as it was originally dismissed and ignored as a quirky and misguided protest coming from anarchist-hippie-communist malcontents.

Occupy Wall Street may be in hibernation during the harsh winter months but come this spring they are going to come back with a new found energy and no police or governor is going to be able to pepper spray, beat or arrest millions of people…it is just an impossible task, IT IS SIMPLY LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE!.

The immediate future will be the crucial point to define what kind of America we are going to be. Will the America that we all love and has been kind and compassionate cease to exist due to a small sadistic and selfish minority’s misguided set of values? I should think not. Most Americans long for that gentle and egalitarian America, one where the people actually give their vote as permission to a person to represent them and legislate in their favor…not those of a very small minority and a greedy, selfish one.

There is hope for America after all.