US Congress Given Lowest Ethics Rating

I think that is because it is easier to dislike an entity then it is to dislike a person.

 

I agree Snook - and there also has been a general trend towards disliking Congress more and more in recent years. They've repeatedly been getting lower and lower approval ratings. It seems like every few months over the past 10 years you see a new poll that shows "lowest approval rating for Congress" ever.

 

I think the ideology gap is widening (and I don't mean between the haves and have nots or republicans and democrats). Congressmen and women of either/any stripe are increasingly 'them' instead of 'us,' and that's not just a problem with perception. If you ever hang around them you see that they're very much like a different species ('natural' phony smiles, instinctive gladhandling, reflexive lying, etc.); it's as if systematic political maneuvering as a way of life over the long term has brought about genetic defects in them. And while the primary result of this tends to be political, it's actually just 'them' fighting amongst themselves while the rest of 'us' watch detachedly.

 

And yet some people still think the American system works.

 

It always has been. But now it is just more visible to the public with electronic media and the status quo changing for our times. Hell, how many times do we see that they are now raising their own pay. I'll bet that Bill never gets vetoed and both parties have no problem coming together on it either. That says it all to me...

 

I think the the approval ratings are lamentable, but not really indicative of reality. There haven't been really big corruption scandals recently, the last and really outrageous ones were from the Bush years of total GOP dominance. So what happened? All there is today is the bitter and rancorous gridlock that an intransigent GOP has imposed on the parliamentary process, and then there is of course the Republican stance that government sucks.

I find it startling that US Republicans on the one hand decry that government and congress is corrupt and ineffectual and cannot do anything right, while running for office on a platform of being against government (government sucks, and that's why I want to be part of it?). I have never succeeded in wrapping my head around that logic.

Beyond logic, or lack thereof, it makes cynical sense politically: It is the result of decades-long effort to erode public faith in government. It aggravates voters. Aggravated voters reliably vote. That works just fine with the anti abortion nuts, and it works just fine on the American Everyman who just want things to work, dislikes taxes and traffic jams on public roads, and perhaps the buses to be on time, too.

Interesting article about that: Cynicism, the GOP’s most destructive weapon.

IMO the most pernicious meme in GOP blovitations is that government is itself the problem. I cannot stress that enough. IMO, in spreading that theme, they are undermining trust in government, and in doing so undermine stability in the US proper (there are centrifugal forces in the US, and one unleashes that at ones own peril), and lay the foundation for a more effective, streamlined form of government (breaking sharply with US traditions, all professions of fervent devotion to the sainted founders notwithstanding). That would then be the imperial presidency in which the President has the power to effectively suspend law and govern by executive fiat by invoking national security.

To state the obvious, every civilized society this side of hunter-gatherer tribes needs government to provide basic social needs for security, adjudication of conflict, transfer of property, etc. The more advanced a society and its technology become, the greater and more varied are the needs that government is asked to perform.

To Republicans, apart from locking up people, the government always fails and does everything poorly, if right at all.

At the same time, they assert that the only trustworthy part of the government is the military, apparently protected from being corrupted like the rest of government by magical and supernatural forces and divine grace. I find that hard to believe, and also very problematic for the aforementioned reasons.

 

Well, it seems simple to me. If you want to change something, one way to do it is from within.

If only that were the actual motive...