(November 8, 2023 at 12:51 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:(November 8, 2023 at 12:45 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Yet you argue that they're should be educated in our civics, as if that will fix their ethical shortfalls. You're trying to hammer nails with a fish taco. They're not trying to do the right thing. It follows that the voters need to practice oversight.Yes, my well known political nihilism. Stating the fact that my vote literally does not and cannot matter is not nihilism - and obviously I think that's a problem..that it matters. I keep trying to hammer home the idea that voting cannot be a solution to anything until the votes really do matter.
Otherwise, your political nihilism looks like abject surrender.
I don't care about their ethical shortfalls as a matter of their possessing them any more than I care whether or not some terrible person is my bank teller. I think that politicians ought to be accountable at least as much as a minimum wage joe is at any of their jobs. It's not because banks are filled with only decent people that bank tellers don't routinely steal my money. It;s because there are rules, systems of accountability. It's actually supposed to be that way, it's not even a change to our system. My fantasy, if that's what it is, is simply that we follow our own damned laws that already exist.
If we're willing to even flirt with the idea that we simply cannot expect this much of politicians.....then we're back to furiously polishing that brass, aren't we.
Yep, surrender.