Just what is going on?

Death threats in legislative chambers, insinuation of rape and other bodily harm being committed, physical assault?  These are the tools of people that have run out of coherent arguments and we are seeing it pop up all over our great nation.  This is what has become accepted practice by some in today's politics.  How have we sunk so low?  As I stated in my opening piece, we need to once again become a nation of listeners.  Every American has the same complaint of our political class, "No one is listening to us!"  Right or left, liberal or conservative we have to recognize that our needs are not being met.  I am not talking about wants here, needs.

As humans we have inalienable rights bestowed upon us; Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have agreed to elect REPRESENTATIVES, public servants, to insure these rights.  We as citizens have become lazy and have simply bought into the company line; Red vs. Blue.  It is now accepted practice that if you are blue in a red district your voice is mute and vice versa.  This is simply not how this is all supposed to work.  While the majority does and has earned the privilege of steering the direction that policy goes, it was never intended nor implied for the majority to "rule" without question or opposition.  Many safeguards have been put into place to protect the minority opinion and to give it strength and sway.

What it comes down to is listening.  Listening, it would seem, is an essential part of governing in a representative democracy, otherwise you have a dictatorial relationship and one rules instead of represents.  Listening is how you measure the merit of a bill, or a complaint of a constituent.  Instead our lazy citizenry has spawned lazy politicians.  Politicians that believe power and party is greater than the oaths they take to be seated.  Party line politics has created this great division among us and caused all of us to stop listening.  We have become fans rooting for the home team, we have created winners and losers in a system where we are all supposed to win together regardless of our rooting interest.  Even our  "debates" have sunk to name calling and questions about hand size, civility is gone.  Even the Democratic debates were scored like a prize fight, points going to one liners and zings.  To those of us with a brain this should be an affront to our sensibilities, but we all get sucked into the trap, myself included.  Very few of us can recite policy discrepancies, and most have little insight to the nuances of policy.  That's why we fall for "Build that wall" or "Lock her up".

Something has to give America.  Either we take greater care of our votes and our money or we continue to fall prey to the grifters and charletons looking to bilk us out of our money and time and turning neighbor against neighbor.  Time to re-prioritize as a nation, and start listening to one another.