America currently has the worst political class in its history. But if Europe doesn’t, it’s only because of how very bad it’s been in the past.
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Samizdata quote of the dayJune 23rd, 2012 |
 6 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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‘Worst political class’ is an oxymoron to begin with: politics and politicians are not necessarily bad (although I’d happily do without either), but there’s no way a political class can be good. If that can be taken as a premise, along with the notion that the US political class is the mere extension/continuation/duplication of the European one, then what does it do to Glenn’s point?:-)
Politicians are pretty much all bad, by their very nature.
You only have to look at their absurd wages and massive pensions (MPs and Senators line their own pockets with taxpayers money, voting themselves obscene perks, while receiving massive bungs from lobbyists).
They pretend to be public servants in order to line their own fat pockets. I don’t give a toss what a politician says, I look at the list of his/her donors, because that’s their manifesto; whatever their donors tell them to do.
Politics is, especially these days, just a stepping stone to cushy jobs at JP Morgan. They are all in it for themselves and their donors.
If you want a politician to listen to you, you must first buy them. To be fair, as whores go they are relatively cheap. My apologies to whores for associating them with politicians.
Politicians are great if you own some of them, if you don’t you might as well not vote.
At least with a whore I know that it is me that will be doing the screwing (rather than being screwed) and I also get to chose the whore, the price and the services.
With the political process I get none of these things.
Shame on you for bringing the noble profession of whoring into such disrepute by comparing it to politics.
As usual, Mendicant stands ready to confuse the issue – but hey, that’s what trolls do.
The point is not whether politicians tend to be good or bad people, but whether they can serve a good purpose – and occasionally they do, if some kind of political system is a given reality. The distinction I am trying to convey is that ‘politicians’ are not necessarily the same thing as ‘political class’. Furthermore, the existence of politicians does not necessarily imply the existence of a political class – but given enough time of the former, the latter is probably likely emerge. We are obviously way past that point in time, both in the US and in Europe.
…’to emerge’…
Alisa beat me to the punch.