Politics
is described as “an organized” activity, a group of people gathering behind a
common cause to achieve power.
This
week proved the long-standing assumption that people seeking power often
compromise their own beliefs, abandoning principle in order to advance their
personal agenda.
On
national level, political wizards operate behind the curtains to develop
schemes that will lure naïve people into supporting questionable schemes,
shaping myths out of papier-mâché so that masses of people will flock to the
ballot box on their behalf.
This is
no less true locally. Reformers wave flags that draw groups of well-meaning
people to their cause, and then when achieving power, cease all pretense at
being reformers.
They
become the very thing they rallied against, often leaving the landscape
littered with the remains of those who once championed their causes.
This is
a lesson learned once more this week, leaving a host of disillusioned people to
wonder whose cause to rally for, or to abandon the whole field – seeing
politics as simply too ruthless and corrupt for ordinary people to engage in.
Wandering
through this field of victims, I wonder how we ever get things done, and
whether there are ever any good guys and gals when it comes to pursuit of
power.
Or do
people start out good, and then get perverted by the system they seek to
reform?
Power is
addictive and seductive. We get there and then we discovered the perks, and
then we become the perpetrators of the political crimes we were so bent against
when we started our reform movement.
Those
who still retain faith or realize they’ve been duped, suddenly give up,
abandoning the field of conflict so that no one stands in the way of the power
grab.
Honest
people feel the hurt deep in the bones, suddenly realizing that they have
encountered a cancer for which they have no cure.
They
become the walking dead, stumbling around leaderless, seeing everything as
corrupt because they flags they followed proved to be the disguise for something
they thought they fought again.
It is
sad. It is reality. It is the reason why people do not believe in causes after
the causes after proved false.
Bob
Dylan put it best when he said we can’t trust leaders and must always pay
parking meters.
A
quarter for your thoughts?
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