Into Politics

I've avoided talking about politics for some time, just sitting back to watch the US primaries & then the election. They do spend a lot of time & energy campaigning in the US, given that the presidential election comes down to two candidates & the voters (who bother to turn up) are already committed.
The dust has settled, the chicken will be strangled & Trump will be inaugurated.

The only surprise to me is the number of people who were at all surprised by this result. I wouldn't have predicted a Trump win, but it didn't surprise me. I can shake my head from this distance, point at donald & laugh, but it's in a resigned way of indicating that, as an Australian, I will never understand Americans (which is probably why I don't watch many TV shows from the US).

Having said that, this is exactly the situation we found ourselves in not that long ago, when Abbott took power. Sure, the options are limited, but just take a good long look at yourselves & ask "was he the right man to lead the majority party in the lower house of the parliament?" In the populist sense, did we allow him to run the country? Someone within the Liberal party finally got their act together & fixed the problem, but it was still a "what-the?" period of Australian history to cap off the farce that Labor had given us in revolving leaders.

We are, thankfully, still some time from the next federal election, but I can already predict the rhetoric, & I will not be surprised by the outcome.
The left wing will trot out slogans about needing to make this a better world for our children. The right will claim that everything is terrible & needs to be fixed. Trump had such success with "terrible" that it's bound to be recycled.

These are not the only alternatives - & I don't mean politically. Other parties will also pull their vision out of their anterior & try to engage the voting public with the expectation that, even with a small voice, they can change the world to how their minority sees an ideal - or an idyll - or even an idol.

I look forward to a time when there is a political party that has no vision. It just has competence in governing. Governing, by the way, is a matter of safeguarding the people through a set of necessary laws, & overseeing their implementation by the public service.
As far as I know, posturing is not required, nor is grabbing media attention either in defence or attack.

We should not be electing representatives on the basis of their ability to produce sufficient sound bites for always-on media outlets. We should be basing our decisions on the substance of those politicians. If we prick them, do they simply look surprised, or else provoked? Or do they shoot off on an indeterminate tangent gushing hot air?

We don't get the politicians we can afford, or the ones we deserve, but the ones we allow. The onus is still on the individual to accept the candidates set up before them, or else decide to do something about it & put their own hand up.
Ask yourself - could you possibly do worse?