‘Can’t we all just get along?’

The title of this piece is a quote from Rodney King, a black man whose beating by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991 was videotaped and broadcast nationwide. The subsequent acquittal of the officers involved resulted in rioting in the streets of Los Angeles and the aforementioned question posed by King.

Now, before you start rolling your eyes, let me say that this is not another piece about abuses perpetrated by an increasingly militaristic police culture. In fact, as surprising as this may sound, some of my friends and co-workers are ex-cops. Even in my hippie days I didn’t feel particularly uneasy or targeted by the police. Of course, my people came over o n the boat from Oslo and, to my knowledge, none of them were in chains, but I digress.

My reference to Rodney King goes to a deeper, more extensive problem. There seems to be less and less give and scant cooperation in our people and consequently in our politics. Compromise has become a dirty word and politicians have become far too willing to stand on dogma, disguised as principle. Witness the umpteen votes to end Obamacare. It’s an exercise that both sides agree has no chance of succeeding, but it appeals to an increasingly rapacious base. In the meantime our infrastructure is crumbling and, as of this writing, we have yet to confirm an attorney general. But at least our leaders in Congress have had the opportunity to showboat to the extreme right of their party and cast a meaningless vote against Obamacare over and over and over ad nauseum. What was Einstein’s definition of insanity again?

So how did we get here? Who’s to blame and how do we fix it? The answer is simpler than you might think. The people in office are sent there by us. They are a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of the folks who vote for them. If you don’t like the way things are going, do something about it. You don’t have to build a bunker or hoard ammunition. All you have to do is vote.

Of course voting comes with a little responsibility, like paying at least cursory attention to the issues. For example, no one is asking you to quote chapter and verse of the latest data on ocean acidification or changing marine weather patterns. But when roughly one third of us can’t identify the Pacific Ocean on a map, it means that someone is not paying attention. In order for this self-governing thing to work well, we have to at least pay enough attention to know where the damn ocean is.

Voting also means that you should learn to accept the reality that things won’t always go your way. As a Democrat living in Alaska, I have become quite a realist. Some of the people I vote for make it into office, most don’t. That’s the nature of a representative government.

The truth is people in office pay pretty close attention to the folks who put them there. They may scoop up all that money from all those special interests, but the reason they do that is to buy ads that persuade you to vote for them. Ultimately the voters have the final say.

So here’s the crux of this long-winded diatribe. If politicians are paying attention to the people who put them in office, then they are paying attention to the people who vote. Those are people like me on the sensible, rational, harp-seal-hugging left, and those wild-eyed, bomb-throwing, wackos on the extreme right. The only common ground between us is our disdain for one another, and the dysfunction in D.C. and most state governments is illustrative of that. We are becoming a nation of extremes governed by extremists. And, if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to get caught up in the outlandish bombast of both sides.

As an example, my son, like the President, has a certificate of live birth. His mother comes from Kansas, also like the President’s mom. Apparently my son is Kenyan. A pale Kenyan, but a Kenyan nonetheless. The evidence is clear.

On the other hand, Ted Cruz, a leading GOP contender for the 2016 presidency was born in Canada. Now, for those of you still looking for the Pacific Ocean, let me explain that Canada is not just outside Des Moines, Iowa. It is an entirely different country, and a socialist one at that. This means that Ted Cruz, a Tea Party firebrand, is actually a secret socialist. Case closed.

The facts are that Ted Cruz, like Obama, is the son of an American mother. Most legal scholars agree that this makes him a natural born American citizen. Being born in a foreign country, Senator Cruz was also a Canadian anchor baby, but he recently renounced his Canadian citizenship, so I guess it’s anchors aweigh.

Some of you are right about one thing. Politicians don’t care about you. They are pandering to the extremes and will continue to do so until they hear from you. For this reason you probably won’t see a Republican in the White House any time soon. Republican presidential hopefuls have to run a gauntlet of primaries dominated by voters from the Tea Party and religious right. By the time the rest of the country starts paying attention, the party nominee has had to make so many concessions to the extreme he, or she, is virtually unelectable.

The answer to Rodney King’s question, “can’t we all just get along?” is no. Not unless we know what’s going on. Again, my point here is if you want to stop the ineffectual nonsense that passes for governing, then do it. Don’t just read a bumper sticker or look at a campaign ad and think you’re informed. Watch the evening news. Read a newspaper. Lord knows we could use the circulation bump. Have a nodding acquaintance with the facts and then, for crying-out-loud, vote.

Chuck Legge is a freelance cartoonist for the Frontiersman.