Muse – Political Physics

It’s in action in Florida. Rick Scott’s favorable numbers are dipping. Obviously, in answer to the slapdash attempt at a voter purge, which many speculate is deeply biased. Some have even asserted the infamous Koch brothers are lingering in the background, tugging strings.

Who can say?

But it illustrates a simple fact of political life. There is a certain ‘physics’ to politics. Pull too hard on one side and the other side yanks back. Not always equal and opposite, this reaction, but it tends to keep things balanced. For better or worse, as it may be.

Better that it doesn’t let the whole system careen into the midst of either sides far flung partisan agendas. Worse that it tends to keep this country and others like it stuck within the day to day drudgery of people of influence fighting over influence which is then used to keep influence, rather than effecting the sort of large scale, long view that will provide progress for not just the American people, but people all over the world.

Balance keeps us on the tightrope, but it also keeps us gridlocked.

Personally, it annoys me. I’ve listened to a few anecdotes about how politics used to be a few decades ago. Back when Republican and Democratic politicians, despite their ideological differences, could work together on matters of the general good. It wasn’t perfect, but compared to the trench warfare that both sides fight these days, it seems like a slice of heaven.

It would be nice if we could get past the political physics that hold us where we are. There are a lot of things that I’d rather see us get done, besides fighting over just how equal rights should be regardless of who you are and what you believe or fighting over whose belief in that which is beyond common understanding is right. Or even worse, whether or not we who don’t believe in such things should have to live by the principals that don’t mesh with the simple truth of America. Which is freedom before all.

But the petty squabbles linger on.

Source

Poll: Scott Approval Rating Falls To 31%