A Political Challenge: Walking and Chewing Gum at Same Time

If you have ever heard a politician talking about an issue that they do not like or want to have to deal with, you will undoubtedly have heard something akin to: “The nation has urgent and important issues that we need to deal with, and we do not have time to waste on this distraction that is nothing but playing politics.” It does not matter to which political party the politician belongs; they seek the refuge in “serving the nation’s interest” very seriously when it is inconvenient to actually serve the nation’s interests. Now this refuge for the incompetent (or cowardly, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference) would be more or less understandable, except these same politicians will on different issues argue that they “must do something because the Constitution demands that they must” while maintaining that nothing else is more important. It seems there are always good reasons for why they cannot do something or that they must do something; and everything else be damn. Now I admit that I have lots of problems with politicians in general, and especially when I hear these inane excuses and dubious justifications. Mostly, because I do not accept the premises of their arguments nor do I believe someone elected to represent their constituencies should be able to plead that they “Can’t walk and chew gum” at the same time. Oddly, I probably believe them regarding their self-identified limitations in how it reflects upon their intellects. I also do not believe that they can walk and chew gum at the same time; but that is because they do not try, they are not interested in the national issues as much as their own positions. So, they play at the game of ideological politics and do what they do to preserve the illusion / delusion that they are being patriots, persons of honor and worthy of the mantle of respect.

This harsh critique of politicians has evolved but always driven by their failures to demonstrating a recognition of responsibility to the public and nation independent of ideological constraints, boundaries or obligations that do not fulfill their oaths to serve.

So, when I get disappointed again by the political crisis of the day, I look to see if the evasion protocol is being evoked. I suspect you already know, but it gets evoked a lot. There must be a list that each party has that identifies what all the ‘more’ important issues are, what Constitutional ‘duty’ requires their attention at this moment, and what prevents them from being able to do more than one thing at a time. But more than anything else, they will not deal with even the problem or issue that they are so ardently sincere about. Perhaps they would have more time to handle actual national issues, to solve public problem and serve the nation if they did not spend far too much time playing parliamentary rule games or ensuring that they got their 5-minutes of TV time. Maybe there are solutions to these incomprehensible problems that they struggle and can not resolve, if they only considered that there are solutions beyond the arbitrary limits their ideologies constructs. Then they might have that elusive time to see the problems are not incomprehensible, the solutions do not violate their ideological principles because the solutions neither know about nor are connected to principles which do not require the solutions to be effective.