Most of my adult life I’ve tried to remain analytical and fair, but everyone has their limits. For many of us in this country, the political show in Washington has now crossed that limit.
Many have taken to Twitter rants, but we won’t go there. Angry Twitter rants are for trolls or people who lack the ability to back up their statements with facts or coherent arguments. This column is an expanded rant, but hopefully an insightful one.
Washington politics is a zoo. The animals speak their own language, a language indecipherable to most other humans with brains. From both the right and the left come cackles, howls, shrieks and calls to each other in ways that other animals may hear, but they neither listen nor do they comprehend.
Keep in mind, there is an actual National Zoo in Washington, D.C. with real animals, a panda cam and free admission. This D.C. National Zoo is politics. It too has its own version of panda cams (C-SPAN and in case that wasn’t dull enough for you a C-SPAN 2 AND C-SPAN 3).
But admission to see the animals in the political National Zoo is anything but free. It requires donations to PACs, super PACs and campaigns, and that’s before you pay a lot more for all the extras.
Most of the animals love it in the zoo. They have their own staff, they have great health care, they have their own feeding space and they congregate with other like-minded animals. Zoologists have noticed a definite herd mentality. The zoo is a safe-space where the wilderness is kept at bay behind a layer of security including its own Capitol Police.
Many of the animals are hesitant to leave their pens to go into the wild to face their constituents (especially in a town hall setting). They hide behind “busy schedules” and “previous commitments” and hold telephone town hall meetings that are safer and much easier to manage.
Some animals are bigger draws than others. The orcas perform great tricks and draw the most attention. They may appear friendly and fun as they perform tricks, but be careful if you get in the tank with them.
Some of these animals are like the circus seals honking horns for attention and applause, some are like horses showing us they can count by stomping their hooves. The llamas spit at us when they are threatened. Worst of all are the ones behaving like monkeys who find it fun to fling their feces at people as they go by.
Perhaps no one flings more social media fecal matter than the residents of the pen at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is genius. Amid a bad news cycle they hurl Twitter poop and the media scoops it up to show everyone. They’ve fooled the media into covering tweets more than actual issues.
We fall for it time and time again.
While D.C. politics has always been a zoo of sorts, it has now devolved into a circus. The carnival barkers promote side-show antics. The media chase the animals to pick up their droppings and the clowns packed in small cars by the dozen file out to amuse us.
The Zoo and The Circus are a challenge to all of us. National politics have descended into animal-like chaos because we’ve allowed it to happen. We’ve allowed for congressional districts to be drawn in the least competitive ways possible by partisan state legislatures allowing them to act like animals with near immunity.
But what can drive change?
To those with a front row seat, the ones covering the circus: forget the term “media” and respond to the higher calling to be journalists. Ignore low-hanging Twitter fruit. Dig in and focus on the new health care bill, the potential Russian election interference, the executive orders changing regulations on the environment or guns sales or immigration or any number of other issues hopefully being discussed and or debated in a meaningful way.
For the citizens of this country, tune in and speak up. Get out of your partisan echo chambers, read stories about actual issues, not sideshows. Don’t get angered by the minutiae of this sentence in a speech or that tweet. They are the clever politics of distraction. Keep our eyes on the bigger picture.
Rallies must not become merely another circus sideshow. It feels good to publicly take a stand but real change comes in organizing, in the voting booths and in the courts. It takes time and sustained effort. While others may have the money to get admission to see the animals, all that money doesn’t matter when people gather together and exercise their right to organize and to vote.
It is one thing to complain about the circus coming to town but it another thing to make the animals, the carnival barkers and sideshows take down their tents, clean up their mess and move on.
OK, rant concluded, and now I feel better.
