Everything you wanted to know about politics, but didn't care enough to ask

Here are a few political observations I have made over the years:

Politics and sports

Politics and sports are colossal wastes of time. But people seem to enjoy the latter.

Politics and sports are similar: everything’s about your team winning.

If your team wins you either pretend good is being done, or wait until your team is back in the playoffs and assume good was being done.

If your team does wrong, it’s no big deal. If the other team does wrong, it’s an inexcusable outrage.

In politics you would rather believe black is white than believe your team is wrong for having chose black.

When your team loses you know what you have lost. When your team wins you’re never sure what you’ve won.

Society

If you are one of the sheep, self interest is evil. If you are one of the shepherds, self interest is a privilege.

Anything good for the people is a bad idea. Anything bad for the people is “for the greater good.”

When pain is meted out to the people “for the good of society,” money is meted out — for the good of the wealthy.

Elections

When democracy is a horse race the only ones represented are those who own the horses.

In Canada an arbitrary minority party is awarded all the power. The actual majority of voters ends up opposing the government.

National politics is like high school politics — depressingly primitive but without the faint hope of sex.

People who are lazy and apathetic about politics are dumb. Prominent campaign issues are even dumber.

The more people gather together, the lower their collective IQ. During an election campaign, it falls to the level of dumb beast.

An election campaign consists of different teams trying to coax a dumb beast to their side of the pen. The beast doesn’t understand the issues. The coaxers are too intent on coaxing to care about the issues.

The platform of the winning team often becomes a forgotten footnote of the previous election.

Ethics

The role of the progressive is to sit on the sidelines complaining about regressives destroying the country.

Politicians are narcissists. Political junkies get stuck with the least satisfying form of addiction.

Journalists would make good mobsters. There is nothing they can’t rationalize.

Politicians discard their values and principles for a stab at power. Journalists discard theirs for a paycheck.

Economics

Free market ideology is like a disease. It’s also touted as the cure.

Economics is dismal, but it doesn’t remotely resemble a science.

Economics is pre-Copernican: economists can’t agree on whether the Earth revolves around the Sun, or the Sun around the Earth.

Economics is politics with math thrown in to lend authority to political agendas.