Yes America is pretty awesome, but our politics wouldn’t work without people willing to be politicians.
Politicians can have it pretty rough in American life. And sometimes they really do deserve it. Problems like corruption, terrible behavior , and shutting down the Government for no good reason don’t exactly inspire confidence in a lot of the American public. But while some politicians may be deserving of our scorn it’s also important to remember all the other ones that actually make our democracy work.
Running for office isn’t that much fun. It involves putting your life on hold for perhaps years to do things like sit in a closet and call people you don’t know to try and wring money out of them. Or talking to thousands of other people you don’t know and try to get them to like you enough to roll out of bed early on election day and pull the lever for you. It exhausting, brutal work with no guarantee that it will ever amount to anything more than a semi- interesting story about that you time you ran for county commissioner…and lost.
The important thing to remember here is that while we love to make fun of Beltway dysfunction or those clowns in city hall, there really isn’t a better way to do things. The other options would be letting people like Lord Grantham, whose a nice enough dad but is pretty terrible and running stuff, be in charge. Or letting five unelected members of the Supreme Court decide things like which types of birth control should be covered under employer provided health plans, but writ large.
So by all means have fun this weekend drinking beer and blowing stuff up. But give at least a little thought to the brave souls who make the country work.
Happy Fourth Of July everyone!
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