Election: A lot of useless sound and fury

The principal job of members of Congress is to get themselves re-elected. On average, members spend nearly half their time raising money for their next campaign, and much of the rest of the time conspiring to ensure members of the other party don’t get anything meaningful accomplished.

The current approval rating for Congress is 11 percent, yet 98 percent of representatives will be re-elected again and again with voters somehow expecting Congress to be differently each time. Insanity?

But who does the electorate blame for this country’s unaddressed or unresolved issues. Congress? Nope. The president!

The president is not a dictator, king or savior (Donald Trump’s delusions notwithstanding). The president can accomplish little without cooperation of Congress.

As long as Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporations, the American middle class will never flourish. We will be angry. Then, four years from now the presidential circus will come to town, again with new exciting acts that will raise our hopes and distract attention from the realities of a corrupt, dysfunctional, destructive, divisive political system that serves no one but itself.

Without election finance reform, elections are simply an elaborate shared illusion of hope producing sound and fury and little else.

This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 12:51 PM with the headline "Election: A lot of useless sound and fury."