What's "Wrong" with the Legislature?

The world is changing -- which is the news the traditional media doesn’t report on, and this is the reason for the decline in the interest in “politics” as well as the ‘news” in general. Their interests and empowerment have shifted to a much more personal (effective) but also global scale.

About the only ones left in the old style political process are the union members because they are the only ones who still believe that they are “nothing” unless they all stick together and impose their will and interests on everybody else. Most competent people have evolved beyond that mindset -- to become individuals -- who are capable of speaking and representing themselves, and want to do so.

Legislators these days are little more than “shop stewards” rather than leaders and respected in the community at large, with the possible exception of a Linda Lingle or Ed Case. Most of them are advocates (lawyers) for special interests -- and so those are the small minority of people who lobby long and hard for their grab of the pie every year. The rest want no part of it -- and recognize that their participation only legitimizes and validates an unfair process -- in which all the hired hands lie, cheat and steal -- and the press is impressed rather than acting as the first line of defense for the public interest. Instead, they will disclaim that they have a higher purpose than the public good -- which is their own “objectivity” -- as though they were gods rather than human beings with the power to do something, as their first duty as citizens of any society.

And so the press also loses its credibility and influence -- because people see what is going on that the mainstream media doesn’t want to report on, and instead, report on the partisanship as though it was leadership and the only game in town. Real leadership dies for the lack of recognition and reinforcement. The most narrow partisanship is what is reported on -- which doesn’t interest fair-minded people who are interested in a good return of their investment, and not its frivolous waste and frustration.

The reason newspapers lost their influence is because they no longer saw their essential role as contributors to the construction of a better society but instead became “objective” reporters of the “decline” -- while they did nothing positive even if they were the only ones there, because that would make them “subjective.” So they became complicit to this indifference -- and so did everybody else. Everybody has a duty to create a better world -- and not just everybody else so the reporters can objectively report about it while doing nothing to contribute to it, and even fanning the flames of demagoguery as “their” job.