A key point made during the analysis is what portions of the population each body of Congress is designed to serve. The House ends up representing more of the suburban middle class centers, while the Senate ends up representing more of rural America. The comment was that this is the way Congress was designed. In my mind, it means that Congress was designed to be divided instead of united. Thus, this means our country is a divided nation. So much for the "United" part.
I understand the importance of having separate functionality, where the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary share the role of running the country. It concerns me greatly when elected officials have made it possible to divide us as a nation. "Divide and conquer." How can we expect to make significant progress on issues that affect all of us if we cannot come together as a nation? And when we constantly fight amongst ourselves we allow those in power to take advantage of our inattention. This is how corruption can go on, undetected, for decades. This is how waste is allowed to become virulent, money going to projects that benefit a few at the cost of projects that could benefit the most.
It is time to look at our nation and become aware of the many ways we are pushed to be divided. We are separated by political party association. We are split into a myriad of religions and churches within each religion. We are separated by skin color, race, age, gender/gender identification, sexual orientation, socio-economic status. We are divided by neighborhoods, counties, school districts, towns, cities, states, countries, continents. Wedges are driven between us based on schools we attend, sports we enjoy, teams we support, and even branch of the military we align ourselves with. And the list of barriers built to separate us goes on. Who needs a border wall when we have built so many other walls around us?
Each of these divisions we are part of competes for resources. What would happen if, instead of competing, we would cooperate to achieve long-term, well-planned goals that would benefit the majority? Could we not reduce waste, improve efficiency, and have greater congruence among all concerned.
It starts by becoming aware of things that divide us, how these things got started, and who benefits from these divisions. In the end we will find that career politicians and their supporters benefit the most from these divisions. Then we must begin to tear the walls, the borders, the artificial lines in the sand that have been put there by greedy politicians that do not care about the well-being of the majority and only have short-term plans that damage our health, our economy, our sanity.
When a government no longer works for the people, people must work to change the government. In today's world, politicians may be the cause of the majority of problems with our government. Replacing career politicians with other career politicians will not solve the long-term problem. Perhaps getting rid of politicians will be a much better approach.
As George Carlin said: they (politicians) don't care about you [profanity warning]
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