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Health & Fitness

Political Season: Wheel Out the Rusty Artillery of Abuse

It's fashionable to make fun of candidates. Witty outsiders love to lampoon political insiders. Humorous threads do run through the fabric of our policial life.

It's fashionable to make fun of candidates. Witty outsiders love to lampoon political insiders. The critics dress the politicos as clowns. Humorous threads do run through the fabric of political life.

Too often the reflex of government is to discover a problem and then throw money at it, hoping it will somehow go away. Money is the mother's milk of politics. Why else would so many people feed from the government breast.

If Patrick Henry thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation. Pork barrel spelled backwards is infrastructure. There is no furniture more costly than a government bureau. There's no tree more expensive than a branch of government. Government could stand a little more pruning and a little less grafting.

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Politicians prone to talk themselves into a bad spot should remember the first law of holes: if you're in one, stop digging. Consider that you have to live with your conscience longer than you do with your constituents.

Politics is the diplomatic name for the law of the jungle. The jungle is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. In this jungle the politician must rise above principle. And the higher the monkey climbs the more you can see of the behind. It's eat or be eaten. Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

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The analogy of the jungle swings easily to the analogy of politics as armed conflict. If war is politics with blood, then politics is war without bloodshed.  Politics  is almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

If politics is war it's no wonder that when political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is always wheeled into action. Attack your adversary. His policies are a veritable compost heap of decaying brain mulch.

Your opponent has the charisma of a speed bump. Deep down she is shallow.  You could wade through your political adversary's deepest thoughts and not get the bottom of your slacks wet.

A campaign waged by abusing the adversary poses a problem for the unscrupulous attacker. How to win without proving that your are unworthy of winning.

Well, it's election time again. We're allowed to vote. For many it's a lesser of two evils. Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike best.

Too bad the only people who know how to run the government are too busy driving cabs, cutting hair, or writing a smarty-pants blog.

This blog stitches together thoughts of Plato, Thomas Jefferson, Mao Tse-Tung and P.J. O'Rourke.

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