Sometimes I'm tempted to take Grunt's way out and just tune out of the debate. I might also throw in there a retreat from following politics, as well. I might be able to preserve what little sanity I have left.
I use to be very involved in politics. Started by helping my parents campaign for Eugene McCarthy though I was very young.
I’ve read Confucius, Socrates (pronounced so-crates
), Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny the Younger, Saint Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Ibn Khaldun, Machiavelli, Martin Luther, Calvin, Bacon, Hobbes, Spinoza, Lock, Rousseau, Kant, Smith, Burke, Paine, Jefferson, Malthus, Hegel, Ricardo, Fourier, Comte, Feuerbach, Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Kierkagaard, Thoreau, Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, Veblen, Weber, Strauss, Hayek, Fromm, Popper, Adorno, Sartre, Rand, Bobbio, Rawls, Foucalult, Habermas, Friedman, Meyer, Leibniz, Mises, Gahndhi, Chomsky, Mao, Hitler, Lenin and don’t ever leave out the Christian Bible as it’s a wealth of insight into the human character. And that’s just the political philosophers I could cull off Wiki lets not get into the historians, and other social scientists and politicians.
What did I learn from all of this. Pretty simple, those with power get what they want and those without power don’t. Spin, moralize, justify any way you want if it makes you feel better because in the end might makes right because those with power decide what’s right and wrong. If people want to save themselves some reading some very smart men distilled most of this all down into one document:
Up until the 1993 election I never missed voting (well I don’t count my write-in vote for Mickey Mouse that year). And in the end after all the learning, campaigning, voting what difference have I made in the world:
Used tear gas and a shotgun to drive off 50 or so demonstrators out of 2000, who broke off and tried to scale the wall of the embassy in Accra. Another Marine and I pulled two kids out of burning building in Freetown (probably died later in the civil war). Saved another Marine from drowning. Helped put out numerous fires as a volunteer fire fighter. Volunteer help a various JROTC and Veterans functions. . . .
OTOH all my political efforts have never made the difference in any election because reason only wins debates while emotion wins elections and I won‘t use emotion to scare people onto voting.
So yup I’ve checked out of politics too.
