Here's to Politics

Here's politics and the world in a few hundred words.

Law is violence. A "law" is just the statement, "do this or we will kill you". Tax law means "pay taxes or we will lock you up in jail, or shoot you, or destroy your family". Criminal law is "don't do bad things to other people, or we will lock you up in jail or shoot you, however we feel at the moment". Civil law is "pay those people the money you owe, or we'll send someone out to harass you, and if you don't listen to them, we'll send someone out to threaten you, and if you don't listen to them, we'll shoot you".

The motives might be good, and we might defend the right of the law to use violence. But violence is what it is.

Government is the use of violence in a diplomatic and secretive way.
Politics is the bitter struggle for the right to control the guns.

When you have something that is birthed in violence, it will return to violence. Thus, politics will never be clean, politicians will never be honest, and the government will never be effective. They're not designed to be. The government exists to maximize its ability to perform violence, not to suit some petty purpose you believe you've foisted on it.

Because of this, entanglement in politics leads to corruption. Look at the religious right and their multitude of scandals.

But there's a better way. Politics doesn't have to rule. Let's consider other possibilities.