It occurs to me that the Scott Brown thing...

this is just politics as usual. The republicans get in power, they screw stuff up, so the dems get a referendum vote and get power, they screw stuff up worse, and so now we are back on the republican referendum vote.

The one thing that I can guarantee with certainty is that if the republicans get back into power, they will commence to screwing things up again, just like they did before. There still isn’t anything new under the sun.

Of course, the American Public, in their infinite wisdom, has such a short memory that every time this happens, the new party coming into power is hailed as the savior of all things. So soon we all forgot how much THEY screwed things up when THEY were in power, and hail their return as if they are our own personal governmental messiahs (sound familiar?). Brown is nothing more than a symbol of things to come; he is a symbol of the return of the “guys that didn’t screw things up nearly as badly”, which pretty much sums up the republican’s campaign strategy (which is working, thank God, because I do not want another Day of democrat supermajority, thanks very much!)

They are not saviors or messiahs, though, and as long as we Americans sit idly by and accept a two-party system as if there were no other alternative, we will continue to be forced to choose between worst and worster (coined a new word there, I think). I take no glee in that. I find no victory in the fact that we’ve banished one evil in return for a lesser evil.

As long as we are forced by our own complacency and willful ignorance of things recently passed to adhere to a two-party system, I can only prescribe the following, and pray that we all follow this as closely as possible:

1.) Always, always, ALWAYS have an executive branch of a different political party than the current majority in congress. They will spend much of their time arguing amongst themselves and leave us the heck alone;

2.) Never, ever allow one party to achieve supermajority status in either house (for obvious reason);

3.) Vote out incumbents at all opportunities, whenever the playing field is roughly even. Obviously, if the challenger is bad enough, don’t vote for them, but if they are roughly even (like an Obama vs. McCain ticket, for instance) then vote for the guy not currently in office, even if it means voting for the party you disagree with. This will accomplish two things. One, it will ensure that the people in congress are relatively clean – they won’t have had the time to get embroiled with lobbyists and special interests and get “dirty”. Two, it will ensure that the majority in the houses will flop back and forth often enough that they will be too interested in undoing the things that the previous party did to foist anymore crap upon us.

I know that this will gridlock our government, but that isn’t a bug so much as it is a feature. I have a revelation for those of you who think you need the government – you don’t. You’ll be fine without them, with the exception of local governmental activities such as law enforcement and fire suppression and roads and such, but I’m not talking local governments. I’m talking the feds. As far as I’m concerned, all they ought to be doing is representing us on a global relations level, supporting a common defense, and ensuring the states play nice with each other. Other than that, gridlock is the best option in my opinion.