Is the American Political System Relavant at all?

The purpose of a political system in a free society is to have an open debate about the priorities represented by actions and sanctions taken about the activities of its population and in response to the activities of other countries and groups. I think this sounds vague, but it is important to set a framework for breaking through the rhetorical positions of the political factions here, and to point out how destructive these positions are to a meaningful public discourse and problem solving at the level of the nation as a whole, and to the States that make up the Union. A failure for the process to respond to critical need results in a loss of faith in the organizations and threatens the very integrity of the Union. This is not a far-off possibility.

If the job to focus on is that the actions of the branches of government is to set the priorities in society, not just of government spending, but through its influence over private business, to set national goals and to enforce national values, I contend that the rhetoric of the current political process obscures this function and that the conflict of interest of the major players sows the seeds for the abandonment of the system.

One may regard that no matter what the fortunes of the current political factions that failure to heed external limiting factors that reside in the Earth's biosphere now increasingly impacted by human activity will hasten the invalidation of these political and economic traditions and memes; that the human intention and ideology is trumped by the play of external limiting factors and random events.

The political process is too slow and inefficient to respond effectively and that given the accleration of human impact on the planet that no matter how well intentioned it will be discredited by a failure to act in time. The dialectical process of competing political factions does not leave time to effectively find a solution to a particularly pressing disaster and rather than working its effect through obvious catastrophe it will undermine itself through neglect. Those left out will lose faith in institutions, no matter how vaunted their design, prove to be made ineffective.

In the case of the BP oil spill, the political dialectic of the competing interests of the oil company to cut its losses, with its ability to delay and wait out those it has injured, along with caution in the government resonse that is seen as collusion or ineffectiveness, results in a raising of mistrust in all the powerful interests that in turn leads to an undercutting of their power. Ultimately money and investment does not replace trust and good-will, and if this is exaggerated by mismanagement of limiting factors in the economic and ecological process that the response is based upon, the dissolution is hastened.

This is why a simple change of political direction toward one of the poles of the political specturm wll not work; and why thinking about the underlying process of how priorities are set is a better way to proceed, and that the consequences of not acting effectively are not described by a conventional profit/loss or risk analysis, in other words the assessment of risk will be wrong. The consequences of that will not be forseen and can include a destruction of populations and wealth on a grand scale even if that consequence does not include World War. It will render political theory and traditions of politics irrevalant. It will probably render economic theory irrevalant as well.