Saturday, April 12, 2014

In Washington, good intentions appear to trump facts

Look, I'm not going to say here that I'm an expert on politics, because all I really am is a respiratory therapist.  But I do study politics, and chances are I do a lot more reading on it than most people of any age.  So, in a way, that kind of makes me an expert of sorts.  

What I have learned about Washington politics is that many people involved in it, many people who are elected or selected to the various offices, have no clue.  The don't know about taxes.  They don't know about websites.  They don't know about the law.  They don't know anything but reactionary idealistic theories.  

Everything they do, all the decisions they make, are based on these idealist theories.  And these theories are based on the idea that if they do this, or if they do that, they can create a Utopia.  They do not care about facts.  In fact, facts are the enemy.  If someone  comes at them with facts to disprove their theories, they say things like, "I'm doing it for your own good," or "we are doing this with good intentions.  

In other words, when someone attacks their theories they react, and they usually react by saying things like the following: 
  • "If you aren't for gay marriage, then you hate gay people. Period." Of course, we know this is not true, that people who don't support gay marriage don't want to do anything that will hurt the sanctity of marriage.  
  • "If you hate Obamacare, then you want to take away healthcare from good people."  The truth is, no one wants to take healthcare from people.  In fact, Obamacare had taken away more healthcare programs from people than any other program ever. 
  • "If you don't support government programs you don't care about the people who receive government supported charities, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc."  The truth is, during the 1980s, when taxes were at their lowest, people made more charitable contributions than anytime in world history.
I could go on.  The general idea is, that to these people, good intentions berates good facts.  Nothing they do ever works.  Everything they do, good intentions or not, simply leaves behind train wrecks.  

Voters let them get away with it because they do it with good intentions. So, again, good intentions trump facts.

Further reading:

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