A few hours ago when I first sat down to write this, I wanted to talk a bit about educating the political process and how difficult it is to bridge the aisle between two parties when people are implored not only to choose their own news sources, but even choose their own facts these days.
Then I came across this video posted on House Speaker John Boehner’s YouTube account as a House Republican commentary version of the State of the Union address and that spun me off in an entirely different direction…
I’m not even going to address the fact that they decided to edit out the President’s comments about climate change, ridiculous as it is, because instead watching these comments unfold painted for me a picture that was more concerning than just doctoring a simple video. The problem is bigger than that, and I think a prime example is the fact that after the President gives his State of the Union address, the opposing party sees fit not only to give their own contradictory speeches, but even worse so to go through the President’s entire speech line by line so that they can interject their catty, “Nuh uh”‘s after every last thing that the President says.
There’s no respect in politics right now, and it comes from both sides, and it shouldn’t really be a surprise when these clowns can’t manage to get anything done when the majority of their time in office is spend jeering each other like they were kids on a playground. But these are adults … who we’ve all elected to office … to represent us.
It’s clear from a simple glance that it’s the President vs. Congress and Republicans vs. Democrats and even ultra-conservatives vs. only kind-of conservatives – there are so many different divides and everyone is so entrenched in their own politics that they have no desire to get along with the other side, much less reach across the aisle to actually come to a consensus on anything. The outbursts, the pouting and failure to accept a verdict and then move on, the holding of a bill hostage over something else that got tucked in that really has no business being associated in the first place.
It’s all just embarrassing, and it’s why before I think we’re ever going to get any real progress from our government on a respectable scale, we need to see some changes in the people who are put into office to make sure that they’re actually committed to working for the people instead of just bickering back and forth like a bunch of Real Housewives. Stricter term limits, performance expectations, hell, maybe even abolishing the whole party system altogether because seeing important legislation just fall to party lines makes it seem like our congressmen didn’t even do the reading in the first place!
If we want to see change, we need to start holding our politicians to a higher standard, and I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being embarrassed whenever *I* read about whatever they’re supposed to be doing in the news. 🙁