Class, Today's Practice Quiz is on Political Science

So, let’s say there’s a country, nowhere near the U.S.A., that’s a democratic republic. (A democratic republic is where many people can vote for their leaders, few do, and most think they live in a real democracy.) In 2000, President Fossil Feather and Vice President Smirky Snarls got into office. In 2004, they renewed their contracts with the people and retained their offices for another four years.

Actually, it is likely that Feather & Snarls didn’t win the election in 2000, and possible that they didn’t win in 2004, but they had a lot of friends in the government who lied them into office. And they did get enough votes to look like contenders.

So these two hooligans turned out to have lied about what they would do if they got into office, lied to get their nation into war and keep it there, and basically said "fuck you" to any law or civility that stood in the way of their doing what they wanted to do.

You are giving a lecture to the people of this country, about what they might learn from their experience with Feather & Snarls. What do you tell them? (Note: you may use events in the last few years that occurred in the U.S.A. to flesh out your answer.)

ANS: The good answer includes the following:

(1) You’re responsible. Enough of you voted for them and voted again for them to give them the legitimacy they needed to steal the election. And, if you didn’t vote for them, you know people who did, and you didn’t chain them to radiators and shred instead of mail absentee ballots so their silly votes could not count.

(2) The way candidates treat you and each other during the campaign is the same way they’ll treat you after they’re in office. You voted for people who lied to you about what they would do. They also lied to you about who their opponents were. They also told you ridiculous things about what their opponents would do if elected. You voted for lying, slimy hooligans. That they were people whose morals paled in comparison to Voldemort’s* was obvious to your pet gerbils, so it had to have been blatantly obvious to you. Did you really expect them to treat you differently once they had the keys to the country?

(3) Turning a blind eye to, or making excuses for dishonesty and greed in your "elected" officials doesn’t make it go away. It’s your job to clean up the mess you made. Just as ignoring a slithering, drooling killbeast once it’s entered your home won’t stop it from eating your children. Especially true if you’re the idiot who left the door open.

(4) If you vote from fear and greed, you get what you deserve. You also dishonor those whose blood was shed to buy and keep your freedom. If you vote with courage and concern for others as well as yourself, and use your common sense to wade through all the crap that’s thrown during the campaign, you’re more likely to make better decisions.

(5) Anybody can make a mistake. Don’t do it again.
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* The difference between Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the deeds of a real prez and veep like Feather and Snarls is as follows: Riddle killed nice people who were make-believe folk from the mind of a lovely lady in England. The real Feather and Snarls have sent thousands of real people to fight and die in a real, and unnecessary, war with real weapons that really kill. Really. Wishing it away doesn’t bring them back. Their mamas didn't carry them into the world just to become the moral of a story.