Boogeymen

Watching politics is a lot like watching a train wreck. Part of you wants to look away but the other part of you is too fascinated by the death and destruction.

For me, one of the most entertaining aspects of politics is the boogeymen. Every politician and political group has boogeymen that are supposedly responsible for the nation’s woes. These boogeymen change whenever it’s politically expedient and when they do we’re told that we were never at war with the previous boogeymen but we were always at war with the new boogeyman.

Right now the Republicans and Democrats seem to have settled on their current boogeymen. The Republicans are blaming the nation’s woes on immigrants while the Democrats are blaming the nation’s woes on Russia.

Why do politicians and political groups always point to boogeymen? Because they need to deflect attention away from the people who have been screwing things up, the people who are actually in power in this nation, themselves. And if you talk to most people they’ll acknowledge that the politicians have screwed things up. But then they’ll totally ignore that sentiment when one of the boogeymen is brought up. Mention Russia around Democrats and they’ll fly into a frenzy about how Putin manipulated our election like some kind of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent. Mention immigrants around Republicans and they’ll foam and the mouth as they spew vitriol about the evil immigrants who built their deck and roofed their house being lazy and unwilling to work.

The reason politicians continue wrecking things but remain in power is because the average person is stupid enough to ignore their antics so long as they’re given something else to fear.