Open Your Eyes. You're Being Duped

Quoth Bill Maher: "The devil didn't fly up from hell and knock a hole in that levee. The levee just didn't get built because the money for it went to rich peoples' tax cuts and pork projects and corporate welfare."

True, Mr. Maher, but the money also went to failed and wasteful welfare programs, wars, our growing police state, propping up failed airlines, and every other inefficient, corrupt government program that our Congress has thought up to exceed their authority since the New Deal. In fact, even if those rich people hadn't gotten their tax cuts, and if the pork projects were eliminated, and if we hung huge corporations out to fend for themselves like we should, the government still would have done a terrible job. And that's just because they have no reason to do a good job.

People like to point out how under capitalism people only act to maximize profits, and don't do the right thing. Well, the same holds for government, only things turn out a thousand times worse because politicians don't even have to do anything except steal to get their money. At least private corporations have to make something or do something for someone. As much as you might hate Wal-Mart, you don't have to spend your money there. When government negligence makes a terrible disaster even worse, the government just demands more money. We have virtually no control over the processes of government, because most people just don't care enough to hold politicians responsible for their egregious errors.

As long as we're stuck in this false dichotomy between Republicans and Democrats, we will fail to realize that the real problem is that the vast majority of politicians, no matter what party they are in, are at least marginally corrupt and largely incapable of doing that which they promise to do. In the sea of apathetic voters that is America, your vote means nothing, and the same imbeciles will continue to pick your pocket year after year, no matter how angry Democrats get that their favorite Skull & Bones frat brother didn't win the 2004 election.