non-reformist reform

for me at least this advertisement from today's new york times magazine holds significant insight as to why the political system seems so disconnected and unresponsive to the actual needs ( you can forget desires ) of the polity at large...the system is consquentialist...is assigns ethical merit by what people have and how they achieved it is pretty much secondary...it's what you have, not what you are that matters...bny mellon understands this and wants to help you reach that gold standard of ethical preeminence by supplying you with a route to "never ending wealth "...there are a number of roads to wealth...televangelism...successful fraud...and this merits a brief aside...the system does not have many ethical rules about acquisition but a few do exist about sources of wealth...bernie madoff and jay gould were not necessarily vilified for fraud so much as whom they defrauded...jay gould stole from the stockholders and was made egregious...bernie, more recently, defrauded wealth as well...wealth frowns on loss...you can bilk and fleece the hoi polloi, be very careful appropriating wealth from the wealthy...politics is another road to wealth...have a careful look at the net worth of members of this congress and do some research on the next...they have more money than you...they are in the service of an acquisitive system and are becoming wealthy themselves...this does not bode well for substantive political change...i am prepared to believe that there are people who enter politics in a spirit of public service...i am not so much cynical about people as i am about institutions..which is what leads me to believe that their idealism doesn't stand much of a chance when it grinds up against institutional inertia...the system of government the framers instituted is profoundly resistant to substantive change...it requires an overwhelming agreement between rulers and ruled for it to come about and that, given the tribal and self-interested nature of humans, is a rarity...most likely the bits and pieces of their idealism that buttress the democratic image of the hegemonic culture will be co-opted...any hint of non-cosmetic change will be quickly squelched...a "blue wave"? bear in mind that the framers were all about defending the status quo from the depredations of an "interested and overbearing majority"..so it's hopeless is what i'm saying, right?

no, not entirely..i voted last friday...in terms of primaries, general elections, and off year local primaries and elections this marks the fifty-sixth time i have voted since 1972 and intend to continue for as long as i can...because it makes politicians nervous when a lot of people vote...it isn't going to alter the inertia of the system much...but it just might make them nervous enough about outcomes ( they love voter apathy...it becomes much more predictable when the only people voting are those directly benefiting from the systemic cronyism ) that they might have to pay some attention to voter needs rather than their handlers' interests...so go vote...the effort may prove worthwhile in terms of establishing some actual accountability... another small aside...this from personal history...my grandfather, whom i did not know..he died twenty years before i was born, was a politician in a small indiana town in the 1920s...my father knew his father and, i believe, loved him...my father also knew his father's political cronies and his constituents and said, in my hearing and something my mother repeated often well into her old age, "if an honest man goes into politics his friends will make him dishonest quick enough"...this holds true form the city council to the senate...jay gould is in the white house and even with a "blue wave" the prospects are grim...these people are not going to surrender their prerogatives readily.