Iconoclast: Political Lunacy

Quick disclosure. The following is based off my own observations about the world. I don’t hold any political science degrees and don’t claim to be an expert in these matters. My goal is simply to help you think from a different perspective so that you can make your own sound judgements. This entry will be primarily about the election process. Topics such as democracy, capitalism, and modern society will be covered in future entries.

In part one of this series, I referred to our current political structure as the pendulum system because that is precisely what it is. Even the average voter understands this, but I what I find bizarre is that they know this but still choose to have faith in it. Every election year brings with it a pattern that behaves in a clockwork fashion. When one side wins, the other side proclaims the end of the world for the first few weeks. A few months in, the losing side hyper-focuses in on failures while the winning side declares minor victories. Two years in, the losers have settled on the winners being the ultimate failure with no accomplishments while the winners call the losers: anti-democratic, terrorists, anti-American, etc. By the time the fourth-year rolls around, the losers brace for their turn to be victorious by smearing the works of the winners over the past three years, while the winners cherry pick the good changes that have taken place at random and claim them as their “See what I did!” speech. Finally, the election rolls around once again and the cycle repeats.

When looking at it from this spectrum, it already appears to be absolute madness, but unfortunately, its even worse than that. Let’s dive a little deeper, discuss it, and then dive even deeper from there.

In the midst of this autonomic cycle, we are confined to making choices within an invisible parameter that we didn’t even set ourselves. We are forced to choose between two millionaires/billionaires (because the average campaign for a single candidate is north of $3 million). Meaning that we are forced to choose someone who has little to no experience in the average life of the voter because the average person cannot afford to run. Yet, they fool the voter into thinking they do understand by sending out fliers with a picture of them standing next to a tractor, with their family, or in an open field somewhere as a way of saying “See! I’m just like you.” Once they have a platform, they will proceed to speak on issues while presenting a solution that mimics our respective tribe’s ideals. Even worse is that these are issues we don’t actually care about, they are issues we are told that we should care about. Our collective intelligence is insulted by being forced to care about things we normally wouldn’t lose sleep over. While at the same time being sold a basket of solutions to these issues by a rich candidate that is simultaneously asking for a donation to their campaign in the middle of your struggle to pay an electric bill. The icing on top is that these issues you're told to care about causes you to cross swords with your neighbor who happens to have a different solution than you do, and their solution happens to mimic the other tribe. Tribal code then calls for you to either change them or shun them, because they are the enemy and associating with them makes you the same as them.  

If this sounds too exaggerated, then let’s explore an example.

The average voter’s main concern is keeping food on their table, their lights on, and their home a stable place of refuge for them and their family. However, every election year, that voter is told they should care about a $34 trillion national debt. A debt that is mathematically impossible to pay off. To digress a little bit, the national debt was never meant to be a paid off because our currency is based off of debt. For every dollar printed, a percentage of interest comes with it. Which means that if we were to go back to the very beginning and print the first dollar, we would not be able to pay that dollar back in full because the interest attached with it, demands more than exists. Yet, here we are with knots in our stomach over this made-up concept. Here we are fighting with our neighbors as we blame each other’s respective tribal leaders as the cause of this concept.

Have you ever noticed that when a new breaking political story echoes across the airwaves, it isn’t long until the average citizen makes it their talking point in their next discussion? The on-air debate between two political talking head rivals, essentially spills into the streets between those who follow the two tribes, almost like it’s gang warfare. This is not by accident. You can practice your first step of critical thinking by listening to the next heated political discussion you come across. Notate how many things being mentioned are things you heard in the news recently. You’ll begin to notice that some will even plagiarize the very headlines themselves as if they came up with the idea originally, although they are not doing it intentionally. For instance, the right seems to have a strange obsession with calling people on the left a “Marxist”, even though a lot of the people doing the name calling have not read one word from Carl Marx. But they heard people on the media use this term over and over when referring to their political rivals, so naturally the viewers will follow suit.

Let’s go back for a moment to the early days of 2020 when the pandemic was the hot topic. I specifically remember coming across a heated discussion about the shortage of ventilators in hospitals and how we needed to conserve them along with how our political leaders aren’t doing enough to get more of them. Now, is this something the average person would normally concern themselves with? Absolutely, not. A topic like that is normally reserved for doctors, patients, and other medical professionals. Why would the average citizen whose occupation is outside the medical field worry about it? Because they were told to care about it during a time when emotions were at their highest.

Let’s fast forward to more current times. I recently did a random scroll through TikTok’s live sessions. I lost count at just how many lives I passed that were filled with group sessions bantering back in forth over news that is less than forty-eight hours old. At the time of this writing, Trump’s hush money trial is ongoing and I find it bizarre how many people are focused in on this case. No matter what happens in this trial, the election will come and whoever wins will win based off the same issues we are told to care about, not those we should care about.

Below is my personal list of things our political leaders should be discussing based off what I see the average voter struggling with on a daily basis.  

• How to increase the agricultural yield.

• How to feed the over 44 million Americans who are starving within our own borders (https://www.feedingamerica.org/)

• How to solve the homeless crises for the over 500,000 homeless in America. This will continue to be a growing problem as long as the cost of housing continues to skyrocket. (https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-population-by-state)

• How to improve the curriculums in our educational system. This should be top priority considering over 10% of the US population believes in flat earth. If 10% doesn’t sound like a lot, that is 33 million people. (https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-a-survey-of-us-public-beliefs)

• How to reformulate our food processing. Our food is a majority of mass produced and processed junk that is filled with carcinogenic ingredients. For example, Red 40 is banned in close to ten other western countries for its cancer-causing properties but is used in almost every processed food item in the US containing a reddish color. This is not including the amount of addicting refined sugars which cancer cells thrive off of. (https://health.clevelandclinic.org/red-dye-40)

• How to solve the growing mental health crises (this will be discussed further in a future blog entry focusing on economics.)

• How to refocus our healthcare system to be disease focused instead of symptom focused.

• How to reconfigure our power grid to be more stable. Denmark and France have some of the strongest grids in the world, adopting their practices would be beneficial.

• Resources devoted towards reducing the prison population. That is not suggesting letting everyone out of prison. More so understanding the cause of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Almost 2 million people are incarcerated in the US. That is almost 600 people per 100,000. One way of doing this would be looking into how the Nordic nations conduct their justice system since they have the lowest recidivism rates.(https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2022.html#:~:text=Pie%20chart%20showing%20the%20number,of%20573%20per%20100%2C000%20residents.)

These are just a few of my suggestions. For the sake of space that is all I’ll include for now. Now, let’s take a look at the list of things those who are currently campaigning are talking about.

• The impossible national debt.

• A generational conflict occurring in Eastern Europe.

• A multi-generational conflict occurring in the Middle-East.

• The southern border with absolutely no emphasis on the northern border.

• China’s rising economic prosperity.

• A somehow depleted and under recruited military with an over $800 billion budget.

• Oil

• “Restoring law and order” in a country with the highest incarceration rates.

• Inflation.

Obviously, this isn’t a complete list, but it can be clearly seen that these are not issues that the average citizen would normally concern themselves with, but naturally they are fighting with one another over these things.  We are led to believe that these issues somehow affect us in a trickle-down manner but that is simply not true. There is a famous line in the movie “Gladiator” when the young Roman emperor asks the question “What interest does the average Roman have in Germania?” Apply this statement to a modern context and the question becomes much more profound.

Go ahead and take some time to compare both lists and ask yourself which seems more relevant to you. Then go one step further and ask yourself if these people truly care about you. Are you willing to continue to fight with your neighbor who is struggling as much as you are when they say something negative about your respective rich politician? A politician that sleeps in a mansion, when both of you sleep in a shack.

I believe more are starting to see this for themselves because I’m hearing people say they don’t know who to vote for anymore. As I’ve said previously, I decided not to vote at all. Both sides have a list of names they are ready to call me for the beliefs I hold. Plus I feel that is the best way to maintain a sense of personal dignity by refusing to participate in putting another rich politician in power. Especially when I don’t hear either choice mention anything that I listed. Why have we not heard one presidential or congressional candidate ever run on the premise over eliminating the 16th amendment? Why are we still paying an income tax that was originally implemented to pay for the first world war? Or at the very least, why has no politician as of late, mentioned eliminating just one of the twenty-two types of taxes we pay? Something every single constituent on both sides would 100% want?

Let’s not forget that campaigns are advertising. These candidates advertise themselves by saying everything we want to hear, or rather what we think we want to hear. Same as a salesman. Once in office, they no longer listen to us, they listen to the money from donors and lobbyists. This why I never had much faith in protesting. I cannot in good faith say that standing on a street corner with a picket sign is going to sway the mind of a politician who has their loyalties.

I’ll give a recent example. We all have seen the recent protests from students across the nation on their college campuses. These crowds are large enough that they have caught international attention and demanded heavy police presence. These students are demanding two things. One thing from their respective university, and one thing from their government. When our president was asked recently if the cries of these protestors have changed his mind. He candidly said “no”. I have to say I respect that honesty as it highlights everything I just explained.

To bring this entry to a close I’ll summarize my overall point. My intention with the Iconoclast series is to help others to reclaim and protect their mind. We may not realize it but we have allowed our minds to be enslaved through multiple channels. From birth we are unwillingly forced into a mental conformity that upholds our culture and values that may or may not have been our own originally. What separates us is the imaginary lines that have been drawn based off the environment we grew up under. When we learn that the line is invisible, that is when we can see real change. How do we do this? Take an afternoon drive through your local city. With every pothole you see, let the words of politicians echo in your mind as they talk about sending another billion dollar package overseas. With every homeless person you see, remember the cheering at ball games when the new state of the art war planes fly overhead. With every mass shooting, cancer diagnosis, or reported murder down the street, remember being told that Russia/China/Iran is your number one threat. Is going down the ballot and checking every box with an R or a D every four years really the answer?

On that note, I’ll close by saying the next entry will be about war and the absurdity surrounding it in our modern times.