Stop the whining! We have met the enemy, and he is us!

Stop the whining! We have met the enemy, and he is us!

As Pogo, a cartoon character of my youth, once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Despite all the criticism of the way Congress works or doesn’t work, all the blaming for current and potential future disasters, the actual enemies in our political system may well be us, its citizen voters.

We prod our representatives relentlessly to direct federal dollars our way, any way possible, but to do so without increasing our tax burden. We support candidates whom we feel will bring us financial benefit, but also demand they start eliminating the federal deficit.

If we don’t get more for our state or district, we get mad, and if it is ever hinted we should pay (via taxes) for what we want, we get even madder.

Most importantly, if our representatives don’t make the people in our chosen trade richer, then they must be replaced. We donate to them so they will donate more to us. We also allow ourselves to become righteously indignant and totally inflexible on issues such as gun control, abortion, gay rights, global warming, etc. We use all our money, emotion, polemics, and political clout to make these issues more important than all others.

At times this stymies and clogs the legislative process, but then, that’s exactly what we want. Right? If we can’t have it our way, then make it so nobody gets anything. Drag everyone down if we can’t have everything we want. At least, that is the way we behave.

We make statements that make no sense, but then act like our own words contain the ultimate truth. We demand the government provide solutions for nearly every problem the nation faces beyond the institutions such as the U.S. Armed Forces, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicare, the FBI, the National Institutes of Health, our Head Start programs, NASA, the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Park Service. People then get up in arms about the failure of the government; claiming, “the federal government can’t run anything right.”

No matter the questions asked, answers seem to contain targeted words and ideas intended to persuade us that the speaker’s opponents are either ignorant or un-American. Members of various political camps express such dire predictions and extreme vitriol that their goal must be to stun the rest of us into abandoning reason for emotion.

This reliance on hysteria needs to change. Being reasonable means that when an opponent makes a good point, you change your position to accept that point. Facts are more important than opinions no matter who holds the opinions. If you and your opposition do not agree what the facts are, then you have not gathered enough facts and you are not ready to argue anything. Don’t debate until you know where you and your opponent’s agree, then start from there. Discuss everything with a willingness to learn something new. If you don’t, you are asserting you know everything.

When we voters change how we think and then say, changes will begin to occur in the attitudes of our representatives in what we like to call our “Washington mess.” After all, one way or another, that mess is there because of us.