Dear Friends,
It seems to me, anyone who believes government has ever been, is, or ever will be fair, is hopelessly Pollianish. Government has nothing to do with fairness, government is all about power, and power is the primary quality of politics. It only seeks to appear fair, but in fact any politician who was actually just, would quickly lose his or her position of power. That is because the opponent who is not fair will use that power to enrich those who are able to help them get into office. Everything government does is to gain power, retain it and protect it. Fairness never comes into the equation, except as a means to silence those without power, and to claim they need more power. To pretend that government is just is to imagine those in government are not human but saints. Obviously they are not saints those in government are more like demons. So, to place your trust and the future of your children in an organization that seeks only power, is to put them in harms way.
A person who has money to give to a politician for his or her election campaign, is able to talk to a politician, while you and I must wait for our turn at a town hall. You and I are unable to go to the White House and discuss our problems with the President. Yet people no different than you or I can buy access with campaign contributions. Pay a few thousand dollars to a politician, and you can meet them for lunch and discuss any problem you might have, and that politician will move heaven and Earth to get it resolved. They want to keep those contributions coming in. That is why it is far more profitable to engage in lobbying government, than to improve products or come out with new and better ones. Feed the beast and the beast will be your friend, starve it and you will be eaten by it. As a result, while you and I the voters are on the outside looking in, the people with money are inside, laughing at us as they eat our lunch.
Those who can reliably insure a block of votes also have access to government to feather their nest. If you can provide a block of votes your personal problems become those of government. If a road is to pass through your property and you don’t want it to, make a call and that road will be rerouted around your land, even if it takes millions of dollars extra and creates a hazard. Because those millions are coming from the taxpayer, who has no say, and the benefit goes to a patron, who provides the means to power. A business competitor undercutting your prices? Go to your local politician and demand they be forced to get permits, be audited, or maybe just shut down altogether. That is the might government, and therefore politicians, wield. To be in the good graces of such a monster is only smart, because remember, government is not fair, it is powerful.
That is why some are above the law. They provide the votes and money needed for corrupt politicians to gain power, and so the same government that would jail you or I for taking a ten spot from a cash register, would turn a blind eye to the most outrageous criminal behavior of the powerful. Stories are too numerous to tell, of judges, senators and congressmen getting away with murder, DUI, sexual assault, insider trading, disclosing state secrets, wiretapping, and even more heinous crimes. Imagine for a moment what would happen to you, if you were careening down a highway drunk with the secretary you are having an affair with in the car, and you put the car into a canal drowning the woman, then fled the scene? But then again, you and I have no political power, while Ted Kennedy did. Clearly it would be against the personal interests of those in power to be fair. Since people seldom go against our self interest, this will be the paradigm as long as humans make up government.
Perhaps this is why everything government does is by default… secret. The naked unfairness, or put another way, injustice, of government would be open for us to see and the scales would drop from our eyes. Even the most ignorantly trusting of us couldn’t deny that government works for the powerful and against the weak. Trade deals that are secret to the people are set by the powerful, like Google did the Pacific Trade agreement that Trump canceled. He also poked Google/Alphabet in the eye by tossing out the “net neutrality.” That is why Trump is so loathed by Alphabet, he got in the way of their monopoly profits, costing them billions of dollars. Would you like someone who cost you billions of dollars? Secrets provide the darkness needed, for the slime mold of political power to grow, while the light of open government is caustic to slime.
Fairness is a sure path to powerlessness for any politician who practices it. Any politician who is actually just is immediately at a disadvantage, because why give money to his or her campaign, if there is no payoff? Why direct votes to them if that road will go through your land cutting it in two, and why would anyone provide cushy well paid lobbying jobs for ex-politicians, if they are kept in the dark during trade negotiations like everyone else? That politician who is fair will face attacks from not only those who are corrupt but from government bootlicks as well. Firms that stand to lose their special access will do everything in their power to destroy him, journalists will create new shades of yellow to describe her, and those who suckle at the teat of government will ratchet up their donations, to get the just out of office. So again, anyone who believes government has ever been, is or ever will be fair, is hopelessly Pollianish.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
