Alaska's Politics: My First Attempt at Writing about Them

Check out the song to the left. It was written in the 1960's and it's as real today as it was back in it's time. I'm using the lyrics to illustrate what I think. I used to enjoy politics and taking my kids to events. Now people are downright ugly. I felt it when I publicly supported someone and lost out on a job-- and the person I supported decided that I wasn't needed right after my letter was published. (I am furious but what can you do? I sent him cold energy vibes, then started looking at politicians for what they are, not for what they say they stand for. They're all dicks, including the women.) I see supporters of other people being downright rude to others who are not on their side. It greatly saddens me. It's OK to hate and I admire some gifted haters for their beliefs. You don't want to be hateful-- that is ugly.

Open up another tab or window and play this song as you read this.

Oh the Games People Play Now
every night and every day now
Never meanin' what they say now
never sayin' what they mean

Since November of 2006 when we read of a prominent Anchorage lobbyist's anxious call to Anchorage Assembly members, politicians of the city level and state level have been providing fodder for the newspapers all over the state. It went so far as our governor firing someone who we think had been her friend, appointing someone whose past would be questioned. For 20 months we've watched honorable men get shaken and taken down. What happened? They weren't perfidious when they started.

Why they while away the hours in their ivory towers
till they're covered up with flowers
in the back of a black limousine

A little can go to the head and the players started playing fast and loose. The voters seemed like mushrooms, happily kept in the dark while they fed them fertilizer and distracted them with new dramas. It is easy to see yourself being regarded highly by the crème de la crème and think you are an emperor with a crown but in reality be one of many princes with an easily knocked off, cheap coronet. Their great splash and power is eliminated and the entire fiasco of their downfall has long since been bird cage liner and turned into compost. It's old hat. What lasts?

Oh we make one another cry, breakin' hearts when we say goodbye
Cross our hearts and we hope to die, that the other was to blame
and neither one will ever give in, so we gaze at an 8 by 10
Thinkin' 'bout the things that might have been, and it's a dirty rotten shame

Virtually every person put in the hotseat in the messes that we've witnessed have blamed the people who helped hook them, be it legislators who had allowed friendships with bottom feeder lobbyists to a police officer brought down by someone he'd said was his friend, and a governor who felt that she'd been deceived. Do politicians actually have friends? They'd be better off trusting random street performers to be true friends than lobbyists, and employers simply cannot trust their employees or do anything that they'd not do for an employee that they didn't like.The fascinating thing is that you realize that with the politicians, they used the lobbyists as much as the lobbyists used them. Would they have been friends with the lobbyists had they not offered them money?

People walkin' up to ya, singin' glory hallelujah
and they try to sock it to ya, in the name of the Lord
They're gonna teach ya how to meditate
Read your horoscope, cheat your fate
And furthermore to hell with hate, come on, get on board

As the trials for the people in the spotlight lessened, they would end up giving it all to Jesus. I applaud this, but really—is this where Jesus needs his followers preaching His name? (Is this where Buddha or Sun Myung Moon would want their faiths preached?) One guy showed up at a well known church and his supporters expressed shock that he was seen by the press there and it really seemed fake, like a display. The church is as showy as he is and the well moneyed idiot who helped sting him. These guys shamelessly used each other. Without a need the friendships did not exist. Another said that he was placing his faith in Jesus after the dust settled. No matter what our faith, we become bad representatives of it when we flaunt it after a major shake down happens.

Look around, tell me what you see, what's happening to you and me?
God grant me the serenity to just remember who I am
'Cos you've givin' up your sanity, for your pride and your vanity
Turned your back on humanity, and you don't give a da da da

How close are any of us to that slippery slope? It's not about money or even about sex. In all of the legislative cases, the lobbyists were alpha males who appeared to have the idolization of the legislators they were seducing. To the seduced, the relationships often seemed like father-son, but once on the stand, the seducers professed to not feel this way and claimed the people that were caught up in the fed's web were warped. In the case of the public safety department, everyone appeared deceived. In the end, had they been doing nothing that needed to be handled discreetly, no one would be fired or in prison.

Politics are sleazy and sleazy people stay with them. They use our faith in God & country and faith in tomorrow are used against us as marketing ploys to get our votes and temporary fascination and then we sit crying because we thought these guys had our best interests at heart when it was never an intent.

Lyrics are by Joe South from his hit, "The Games People Play."