CARLTON FLETCHER: Maintaining the view from the pack

Why don’t you hate who I hate, kill who I kill to be free?

— The Monkees

Someone posed the question in this newspaper’s Squawkbox feature of how poor, working people continue to look on our nation’s president as “one of them” when, the squawker noted, “he wouldn’t look their way unless he was slumming for votes.”

That may be a harsh criticism of our chief executive, but I think the squawker is onto something. We have become so polarized in our country that we now not only agree with, we vigorously defend proposals by “our” candidates that, if we took even a couple of minutes to think about, we’d realize were ridiculous.

Pundits, the Eugene Robinsons, Michael Reagans, Cal Thomases, Marc Thiessens, Steve and Cokie Robertses of the journalism world, are paid to deride every action taken by a member of the “opposition” and to laud the home team, so to speak, so you’ll never get a true picture from such people. And listening to the talking heads on the airwaves — which, apparently is what our president does since he bases a lot of his policies on such blabbermouths — is nothing more than propaganda 101.

I think it’s funny hearing apparently sensible people extol the virtues of ridiculous policy — the Green New Deal, a wall the length of our border with Mexico, free college tuition for everyone, freedom to purchase assault weapons — that, minus a vested interest, are at the least questionable. Yet our support or opposition has stopped being about what’s best for us or our country and is more about getting a “win” for our candidate.

For the most part, the people who represent us in Congress, the Oval Office and other government positions are wealthy or well-off people who had enough money to win an election, which in today’s political world ain’t cheap. And if there’s one thing wealthy and well-off-with-a-desire-to-be-wealthy people care about it’s adding to their wealth. That has given rise to some of the skeeziest, lowest individuals that have infested our nation’s capital: lobbyists.

Here’s what you do as a lobbyist: You’re giving a great big bagful of money, and you go and slip it into the pockets of politicians with “no strings attached, just a show of appreciation” … “oh, but there is this vote coming up that will make people I represent a lot of money, and there will be a lot more of that green stuff to go around if this vote goes through.”

How do you think an organization like the NRA or a private business like Koch Brothers or the Hollywood film industry or the coal industry have all become so influential when it comes to legislation that benefits only a very few? How do you think the tobacco industry is made to pay a fine to account for all the people its products kill on a daily basis but is still allowed to keep making those products?

Why is it so difficult to generate political support for the legalization of marijuana, a relatively harmless drug, when liquor — a leading cause in traffic fatalities — and opioids — the abuse of which has reached epidemic proportion in our nation — continue to be sold, both legally and illegally? Why is the coal industry and frackers allowed to continue polluting our air and water, leading to billions of dollars in health care costs annually, when it’s obvious that alternative means of energy would be cleaner and less harmful to the environment?

The people who control these industries are all rich old men who spend their “lobbying money” — which used to be called “bribes” before it became a way of life in Washington — to make sure they get to keep making money. Sure, they’re not immortals, but when they die they want to go out knowing that they made more money than their rivals and no bunch of protesting pansies kept them from churning out their products, the people they killed along the way be damned.

It’s easy to just follow the rear end of the dog in front of you … keep your head down and keep pulling the sled. That’s how partisan politics work. Just shut up and keep voting for the people on your side. But, damn, at some point you’d think people would want a different view.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.