A change is brewing in the way politics works in the United States. I’m going to make my case for saying that here, but I want to start by pointing out that I don’t think the fault is all on the side of the Republicans.

They just happen to be pretty successful with it so far.

Lying, cheating and stealing, so far as I can tell, have always been a big part of the political process. More recently, however, it has risen to such a level that it’s not just an art form, it’s an entire art movement—like the Renaissance, only in reverse.

“What the hell is he talking about?,” you may be wondering.

I’m talking about the final tossing in of the towel as pertains to civility, and a willingness to have the judiciary decide elections, the push to re-district or force recall elections to cement power and keep the electorate from actually having an impact on our government which is becoming less and less of, by or for the people.

In the old days—and I mean much more than just 10-20 years ago—if I were a politician and I wanted to score political points, I might try to argue or debate the issues. (I might.) If I did, I might make a disparaging remark about my opponents. Maybe I’d even imply they were communists or something. But I wouldn’t hound them in the courts for an entire term of office, spending literally millions of dollars of the taxpayers money in the process.

I mean, think about it. In the end, Clinton may have had sex with that woman, but the American taxpayer was the one who got screwed.

In the old days, if I lost an election, I didn’t wear out the courthouse steps until I could get 5 out of 9 powerful judges to RE-decide it for a nation in which over 55 million citizens voted.

In the old days, I counted the votes and let the chips fall where they may. Then I re-entered the political fray to advance my party’s agenda and (perhaps) salvage my own political future.

In the old days, if I lost an election, I didn’t take the unprecedented step of wasting more millions of dollars on a recall election. I fought and worked and maybe even plotted how I was going to win the next regularly-scheduled election.

But, no more.

Today, candidates never actually discuss anything anymore so that voters know how and why to vote. Instead, they do nothing but sling mud. It’s like watching 30-60 seconds of the World Wrestling Foundation, only nastier, uglier and you know it’s not fake.

And virtually no election gives us the final word on who will be serving the special interests which actually run our country and our economy. Instead we get elections decided by courts. We get mid-term elections—how long before mid-mid-term and mid-mid-mid-mid-mid-term elections? Heck, if we do it right, we can have an election every day!

Those in power aren’t afraid to change the rules or use the government, including the Homeland Security Department, to forcibly arrest members of the opposition party when they can’t get the vote to go the way they want. And they’re happy to re-district and divide up the voting public so as to secure their powerbase and guarantee they can’t be voted out of office. Or one group of Senators will call the police to throw another group of Senators out of the Senate Library because they can’t force a vote on legislation that was released shortly before midnight the night before.

Our politicians have shown they cannot behave without babysitters. It’s time that someone called their parents and gave the kids a wake-up call. You are the parents. You put them in office. You can make them listen. This needs to be done before it’s too late, before all the money is gone and before gerrymandering steals the power from your vote.

Or you could leave it to the corporations and special interests who are always willing to look out for you and take care of things for you. 😉