With my new book An Unlikely Truth coming out, I’ve had a few interesting days recently.
Among several interviews I did last week, I ended up on a right wing radio talk show. We only had a few minutes but the host immediately challenged me with . . . “Well, since money is free speech, how can you get the money out of politics? And why would you want to?”
For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.
Of course, you and I know the answer to that question. But it’s a VERY LONG ANSWER!
It’s an answer that goes to the very core of the values each of us hold about our country, about our system of government, about what democracy means and how it should function in a free society.
Then something occurred to me.
This guy threw me a spitball.
He fired a pitch covered in slime, lubricated with the mucous of his warped, partisan, and corporate view of America, meant to slip and slide off any attempt by me to give it a good smack at least into the outfield, if not the stands.
Therefore . . . there was no point in even trying to answer it.
If you think that spitballs are not in the spirit of good sportsmanship, not aligned with the greater good of baseball and fair play, you don’t attempt to discuss it with a pitcher who has just won his last 15 games throwing the spitball.
You talk to people with some perspective, people who can look at our national sport, see it as only being fair, competitive, entertaining, and a contribution to our culture, when we all recognize that the integrity of the sport is more important than winning a particular game.
As a result, it was long ago decided by fair-minded, concerned members of the baseball community:
Spitballs are the unsavory choice of slime balls.
And the guys who insisted on throwing them were given an ultimatum:
Stop throwing spitballs or you can’t play the game.
It’s the same with politics. We can’t expect Congress or any of our national leaders to do the right thing about Citizens United or the corruption of our system with truckloads of corporate money, when these are the very people who are benefiting from this heinous mutilation of American democracy.
If the current crop of lackluster elected officials don’t want to play the game with honesty, distinction, respect for the American people, and reverence for representative democracy, they shouldn’t be allowed to play the game.
Spitball politics in the form of legalized bribery by lobbyists, play-for-pay politicians, and corruption of our political system by deep-pocketed oligarchs, is destroying America, or at bare minimum turning it into something we barely recognize.
No more spitball politics, I say!
If our current crop of weak-kneed elected officials don’t have the courage and integrity to adopt sportsmanlike rules by legislatively ending Citizens United immediately, they don’t belong in the game.
If a politician can’t embrace and play by sportsmanlike rules, one strike and he’s out!
______________________________________________________________
I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.
Without taking back our government, nothing will change.
In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative democracy to America.
An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) is now available worldwide in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe edition paperback.
Spitball Politics
Among several interviews I did last week, I ended up on a right wing radio talk show. We only had a few minutes but the host immediately challenged me with . . . “Well, since money is free speech, how can you get the money out of politics? And why would you want to?”
For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.
Of course, you and I know the answer to that question. But it’s a VERY LONG ANSWER!
It’s an answer that goes to the very core of the values each of us hold about our country, about our system of government, about what democracy means and how it should function in a free society.
Then something occurred to me.
This guy threw me a spitball.
He fired a pitch covered in slime, lubricated with the mucous of his warped, partisan, and corporate view of America, meant to slip and slide off any attempt by me to give it a good smack at least into the outfield, if not the stands.
Therefore . . . there was no point in even trying to answer it.
If you think that spitballs are not in the spirit of good sportsmanship, not aligned with the greater good of baseball and fair play, you don’t attempt to discuss it with a pitcher who has just won his last 15 games throwing the spitball.
You talk to people with some perspective, people who can look at our national sport, see it as only being fair, competitive, entertaining, and a contribution to our culture, when we all recognize that the integrity of the sport is more important than winning a particular game.
As a result, it was long ago decided by fair-minded, concerned members of the baseball community:
Spitballs are the unsavory choice of slime balls.
And the guys who insisted on throwing them were given an ultimatum:
Stop throwing spitballs or you can’t play the game.
It’s the same with politics. We can’t expect Congress or any of our national leaders to do the right thing about Citizens United or the corruption of our system with truckloads of corporate money, when these are the very people who are benefiting from this heinous mutilation of American democracy.
If the current crop of lackluster elected officials don’t want to play the game with honesty, distinction, respect for the American people, and reverence for representative democracy, they shouldn’t be allowed to play the game.
Spitball politics in the form of legalized bribery by lobbyists, play-for-pay politicians, and corruption of our political system by deep-pocketed oligarchs, is destroying America, or at bare minimum turning it into something we barely recognize.
No more spitball politics, I say!
If our current crop of weak-kneed elected officials don’t have the courage and integrity to adopt sportsmanlike rules by legislatively ending Citizens United immediately, they don’t belong in the game.
If a politician can’t embrace and play by sportsmanlike rules, one strike and he’s out!
______________________________________________________________
I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.
In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative democracy to America.
An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) is now available worldwide in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe edition paperback.