Insanity is a dish best served microwaved

My life is coasting right now, so I thought that I would blog about something else…

I am a moderate Democrat.  I believe in helping people in an efficient way.  I hate government waste and greed.  I am a strong supporter of state’s rights and the separation of power.  To many this would make me a Republican.  However, I believe it is the state’s (nation) best interest to provide energy, water, transportation, and education to its people at a low profit.  California missed a golden opportunity earlier in this decade of purchasing PG&E and Edison Electric when the energy crisis hit and they needed the state to bail them out.  Right now, as we pay nearly $4 a gallon for gas, we could have MUCH lower electric bills thanks to our state owned energy company.  We could have also been supplementing our deficit with income with our low profit from our energy as well.  Oh well, we missed that train–and the high speed train that California will probably never see.  That’s what makes me a Democrat.  Helping everyone live a better life together.

But my party is heading for a very nasty and very public showdown.  The DNC is going to be an all out floor fight in front of millions of people.  From my historical training, I am salivating at the chance to watch a floor fight and all the backstage dealing that will come it.  For that I love politics for the rush.  Yet, this is NOT good for the party nor our nation.  Just like the Bush-Gore election, our country came out of the process feeling jaded and a less united behind our leader.  For as much as a dislike our President, he is just that–our President.  I didn’t vote for him.  Yet, I did with my vote for the system that our country had chosen.  We have, for over 200 years, transitioned power from one leader to the next without violence.  I am afraid the way our current political system is heading, I can’t confidently say that we will have 300 years of peaceful transitions. 

Our country has become much more regionalized as the needs of each area has been magnified exponentially.  The corn farmer is Iowa has much different worries and needs than a software programmer in the Silicon Valley.  As those gaps grow further apart, the direction of our country will become more fractured.  I don’t think there’s an easy fix to our problems as a country.  We are stuck in a war that, no matter how hard our soldiers fight, we are not going to win; we have a serious energy program that has now spilled into our food supply; people are losing their houses that they really shouldn’t have been able to qualify to buy in the first place; we have an aging air and ground transportation system that are on the brink of collapse.  But we as a country as large as our will never agree on a fix unless something drastic such as an attack or disaster will require us to pick up the pieces together.

I think this election is a cross-road for our country and our style of democracy.   The best thing about the Constitution is that the writers of it knew it was fallible.  They knew this because they gave us a way to change it.  These men were not gods.  They were average men that did their homework on styles of government and tried to blend the theories that they thought would work best for what they were dealing.  Keep in mind that they were dealing with 13 states when the wrote it and maybe a million and some change in people if there were lucky.  Our country is a bit larger now than it was then.  Maybe a solution to our problem is to create regional governments that send representatives.  I don’t know if helps or hurts the problem with another layer of government in place.  Yet, these new regional governments would be more apt and flexible to respond to the needs to the people it serves than what is currently in place in our federal government.