Thankfully, we living in California have been spared the most recent barrage of SuperPac political advertising and candidate trashing of each other. Unless we read the national press we have also been spared the right wing’s wanton distortion of the truth of President Obama’s record and what he inherited upon assuming office three years ago, as well as the candidates’ pandering to the nation’s very worst angels of greed, self-interest, arrogance, aggression, self-justification, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia.
In listening to the lies and distortions that daily pour out of the candidates’ mouths it would be natural for decent people to run far from politics. That a two time admitted adulterer and hypocrite and an unrepentant corporate raider who has not a clue about what the other 99% of America has to deal with are the two leading candidates of the Republican presidential contest is enough to make any decent person despair.
Plato reminds us, however, that “The penalty that good [people] pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by [those] worse than themselves.”
Pericles adds, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
Rather than run away, each of us has to become even more engaged. If we run then we deserve whoever we get.
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