Promises, Promises
Holding politicians accountable

By Dorothy Anne Seese
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This is all speculation, but it would be interesting to see how much national conventions and campaign promises, speeches and vows would change if the candidates had to remain accountable for their words or face indictments for misleading the public, lying to entice voters and possible impeachments for failure to make good on their words after taking office.

The reason there are no such accountability factors is that the public in general has, during my lifetime, always considered such promises as bee-ess rather than a candidate's word of honor, and that's a huge mistake in a nation where liberty is/was at stake.  Just how much liberty remains is very problematical, since those who challenge the government for liberty's sake are removed as nuisance factors. Some meet with sudden calamities that aren't easy to investigate since they are labeled "accidents."  Then there are those who will face up to the government and wind up behind bars on trumped up charges.

What should be obvious to everyone of every party as well as those who refuse any party affiliation is this:  all the candidates are able to give us the founders' vision of America as a land of liberty along with a litany of other things that our nation should be.  Then why isn't it?  Because everyone has their own special interests plus all the other special interest groups to deal with, and no one is going to say something like that in public if they hope to enjoy a normal longevity.  No candidate is going to stand in a convention hall and state openly that they intend to make America a part of the global village, or that we're going to continue to play oil games with the Arabs whether they kick our national behinds or not.  We might hear criticism of how the present administration has alienated our former allies, but nothing about how our former allies were paid off for being such good allies.

Politics is plain crooked, always has been and always will be.  It is possible to get men and women of wisdom and integrity interested, but seldom elected, and if elected, they are stonewalled from making any dent in the status quo or the overall agenda.

America was indeed designed by the founders to be a free country, but once we ran out of founders for the presidency and other high offices, the scoundrels marched in, took over, and built themselves little empires in public residences and offices.  Capitol Hill and the White House are monuments to good intentions and proof that such intentions are indeed the highway to Hell.

The common understanding of the word "progress" doesn't have much of an application in political arenas. To average people, better homes, appliances, automobiles and communications are tributes to progress.  To the politician, winning the next election by fooling enough voters into making the same mistake again is progress. So there is a breach in the lexicon of the public and that of the politician, one that the politician crosses only long enough to secure the votes to return to office.  Whenever one stands up at a political convention and brags that they've been in office two to four decades, we know such person has mastered the art of manipulating the political machine and fooling the public.  That person should be investigated for misconduct, malfeasance of office and quite probably tossed out on the street instead of being returned to draw more public funds as a salary for mastering the art of deception.

Term limits have been proposed as a way of preventing the constant return of the same old crooks, but the politicians know how to bring up surrogates to continue the program if they happen to lose an election. New members of Congress are carefully scrutinized to see if they fit the program, or are free thinkers.  No free thinkers will get into the inner circles and most are dropped at the next election for having breached the protocol of the brotherhood of the dishonest.  Honesty with the public simply isn't appreciated in high places.

The only honesty one sees at political conventions is that the candidates honestly want to get elected.  Beyond that, honesty is whatever the traffic will allow.

The presentation of America as a moral people, twenty-first century Puritans in modern dress, is absurd beyond belief.  The morals of this nation are splattered all over the media, from Hollywood films to soap operas to reality television shows. Morals?  It would take a catastrophe followed by a genuine revival to put this nation back on a moral base comparable to the first hundred and thirty years of national existence, counting from 1789 to 1919. After World War I, morality plunged as the nation entered the Roaring Twenties, prohibition, speakeasies, and on into the age of women's liberation, liberal churches, no-fault divorce, and sexual freedom. 

Please note that at the same time the nation was going to Hell via the fast track down, government was growing exponentially with social welfare programs and the family unit was being torn apart by materialism, federal education and more open political expressions of approval of the one world order, as long as this order is dictated by major US and European bankers and military/industrial giants.  We only dislike the Germans and the French who grow grapes or make autos, not the bankers who loan us money. After all, politics shares the same bed with many harlots of world power.

There's a lot of clever speechwriting presented at these circus conventions, all of it put together by some writers that the average public never sees or hears until they get a new job somewhere else, write a book and spill some of the beans.  The speechwriters and the candidates know what the people want to hear, what stirs their emotions, what draws tears and laughter, so that's what they present on the great convention stages.  Those watching via television need not get enthused that something has changed.  This same thing has been going on for decades, and the only thing that changes is that the American people have less true liberty and more license to engage in unseemly behavior. 

Capturing the youth vote is essential to any party, and easier to do by promises that will never be kept.  Youth has an enthusiasm equaled only by inexperience, so they are eager to change the world and believe that it can be done though political systems.  It's the old people, those of us who once thought we could make a difference in the world and found out we didn't count at all, who see through the rhetoric.  Then there are the diehard party faithful whose loyalty is borderline insanity, they'll believe anything.  Every candidate wants to sway the so-called "swing" voters, those who are apt to be thinking.  Sadly, there isn't much left about which to think, other than how to find a place where one can't be found!

An off-year for presidential elections, which is two years down the road from the presidential election year, every member of the House of Representatives is up for election again, and most of their constituents haven't an idea how they voted or how they represented their district.   Nonetheless, that year would be a good time to hold all persons who made campaign speeches accountable for their time in office, and how much progress they have made at keeping their word. 

If most of the people really cared, we would have had such an accountability systems ages ago.  Belief in the party overrides the good of the nation in most instances, and no one likes to vote for a person they have to have recalled.

By not using their power properly or demanding such reviews, the people surrendered their power and all they have left is party loyalty.

So the campaign promises go on, and on, and on, and on ...... and on.

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