We Get Whiny, For a Change

By Allen Kolmes
Epic has decided that we have not been nearly whiny enough. After all, the midterms are practically upon us! And all we have had to offer is positive, upbeat, solutions-based material.

So it is clearly time to start whining.

And in that spirit, we at Epic (actually, just me, Allen Kolmes--I don't dare tell RFB or he'll out whine the
s#&t out of us)  proudly announce a new series--Pet Peeves!

Pet Peeve #1--People Who Complain That Politicians Are All  (pick one or many): negative campaigners, flip-floppers, afraid to tell the truth, whores, hypocrites, etc., etc....

People complain about politicians as if they are some sort of subhuman subspecies--some horribly uniquely inately corrupt, hypocritical, morally ambiguous subspecies created by Satan to inflict themselves upon us otherwise good people.

Bollocks!  The above adjectives no doubt do apply to members of the political class. But this is not the result of faulty hard wiring. Nope. Politicians are in fact homo sapiens just like the rest of us, and at the stem cell stage no different than future, say, fashion designers and auto mechanics. What they are is proof that evolution does occur.

Because the political process is totally Darwinian. The system selects for certain behaviors. It selects for negative campaigning, because that's what gets votes. It selects for telling voters what they want to hear--even saying two contradictory things to two different audiences, because that's what voters want to hear. It selects for people who don't tell the truth when telling the truth will lose votes, because voters vote against politicians who tell them what they don't want to hear.  It selects for people who provide simplistic explanations to complex problem, because voters don't want to think too hard. It selects for people who preach to voters what they already believe, because voters don't want to even consider ever changing their mind. It selects for people who distort the facts, because voters don't want to take the trouble to research the truth. It selects for people who will do whatever it takes to get money, because voters respond to advertising.


So who is to blame for the lousy politicians we get? (Hint for Sarah Palin fans:  NOT the politicians.)

There is a word for politicians who don't pander, tell the truth, refuse to run negative campaign ads, and don't accept donations from special interests in return for future favors:

LOSERS.

So stop complaining about how crappy our politicians are and start complaining about how crappy our voters are. Get over the fact that Meg Whitman employed an illegal alien, or that Jerry Brown shtupped a rock star to whom he was not married while on safari while governor .  Research their policy positions, instead.  If you don't like something a politician says, at least be willing to consider the possibility that they are right and you are wrong.  If an issue sounds too easy to understand, it probably is--learn the nuances of it. And fight to get the special interest money out of politics by pushing for public financing of election campaigns. And maybe, just maybe...our politicians will suck a little bit less.