Has anyone here ever held political office?

[thepainterdoug]

Has anyone here ever held political office?
A councilman, a mayor, local government or beyond?
And if not, would anyone ever consider running for political office?

Many of us have a good deal to say about our politicians. Yay and Nay That's fine and we have a right to do so.
But I wonder if any of us would actually, "step up" and participate ?

We all know it's easy to comment from the outside, cherry picking what works for us, usually based on team, tribe and agenda

There are times I see our politicians all day on the news, talk shows etc, and it seems like a tireless job.

In my town going back maybe 40 years ago, I remember a young ambitious guy was running for office and touted to be the best, most honorable person .
He won ! much to the celebration of many
Within a short time, less than 6 months, he was caught accepting a bribe and removed from office.

Is honesty in politics even possible?

Happy Memorial day
pd

[Johan (Keyholder)]

The closest I ever came to "politics", was in 1979, not as a politician but as a "victim" of party politics.
While I was not involved in politics at all! But thàt experience made sure I never would become active in politics (and remained disgusted by it till this day).

It happened when I was a student-member of the Board of Directors of one of the largest (public) universities in the country.
That body - the highest in the university - also decided on which lecturers could become professors, for life.

Just doing my job (as a representative of the students), made me loose 2 years of studying. In those days there was a - more or less - equilibrium amongst the three major parties in the country: christian-democrats, liberals and socialists. And that was also the case in the public universities, but students were "an unknown element" because they only were there for a couple years.

I had nothing to do with party politics at all, but just by voting (the way I ought to), I was "punished". I did get an MA and MBA later on, but never forgot that experience.

As a student-rep you have three possibilities, in my opinion:

1) play the political game along (and possibly become a professor yourself later on).
2) do nothing, just have this as a "positive" item on one's CV.
3) do what you are meant to do as a student-rep and represent the student body.

The effect of doing what is the right thing to do càn however have dire consequences!

From what I have seen on the political scene, the only "good" politicians leave after a very short time (disgusted, as I had been).

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)

1. Has anyone here ever held political office?
2. And if not, would anyone ever consider running for political office?
3. Is honesty in politics even possible?

1. Not me.
2. Not me either.
3. Very vary rarely. Exceptions are Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Tulsi, RFK Jr and Kari Lake (I believe), Rand Paul, George Galloway, Tony Benn (UK), Enoch Powell (UK, long ago), Imran Khan (Pakistan, now imprisoned), Ibrahim Traoré (Burkina Faso), but very few others.
   (I'd also propose Vladimir Putin, but I'm well aware some might disagree. )

[Ewan]

Would not go near politics.

Is honesty possible; increasingly difficult I would say, and most don't seem to care anyway. To borrow from Wade Frazier, a lack of integrity is prevalent.

I would add the following mostly historical examples to No. 3.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Marcus Aurelius

Gandhi

Martin Luther King

Andrew Bridgen (a current figure)

[ExomatrixTV]

Not me, never will.

• poli = many ... tics = ? (blood-sucking) parasites
• neuro = nervous system ... neurotics (how politicians behave)
• tics & tic disorders: sudden, rapid, nonrhythmic movements of politician's lips
• lunatics: mentally ill politicians
• psychotics: suffering from a severe mental disorder that impairs reality after watching politicians longer than 10 minutes
• pseudo skeptics = politicians feeding the fake dichotomy
• analytics = politician being probed
• cosmetics = politician covering up things
• domestics = woke politicians messing stuff up
• plastics = politician virtue signalling
• semantics = mass psychology weaponized by politicians
• dialectics = exposing all the mess derived from this list
• flawed statistics = politicians justification attempts
• fanatics = politicians dodging accountability

cheers,
John 🦜🦋🌳

[thepainterdoug]

Agree with most everyone . And yet we are demanding of these people who do take on the civil responsibilities we would never do ourselves.

I always call my political choices "the evil of two lessors" . Yet one is better than the other, according to what the term better means to you.

Jim Morrison once said, "when you defeat the authority you become the authority"

A mutiny on a ship, throwing the captain overboard is easy. Then the lead mutineer finds himself in a similar situation as captain. And those who dream about not needing a captain barking orders soon find out it doesn't work

John K/ you forgot hypocrites'tics

[Mark]

Hi Doug.

Has anyone here ever held political office? I have. City Council Place 4 in a town in the Hill Country of Texas of 80-90,000 souls.

It was not really a hard decision to step up. I'd been President of my local Unitarian Universalist Church and drove glass bottom boats on a spring-fed lake in San Marcos, Texas, which introduced me to a lot of powerful people in the city as I'd been the guide on their corporate and elite boat tours. I was asked to be on the city's Ethics Review Commission, where I participated in the censure of a City Council member whose votes benefited his business.

Then folks asked me to run for City Council myself. First a group of church members, then Elders from a local Coahuiltecan tribal council, and many people in the local community. I hadn't sought it, but people called me to it, so I ran. And won. While on Council, I chaired the Criminal Justice Committee, the Sustainability Committee and the Homelessness Committee. Our city, San Marcos, TX, passed Cite and Release, the only city in the state to confront the police directly about their arrest policies and attempt to control who they could arrest and why. Those who had expired insurance, didn't have their drivers license on them while driving, could get released and fined, and a court date set for them if necessary, they didn't have to be arrested on the spot. That's all it did. But. It resulted in an intense campaign from the state level to get me out of office, so I lost my reelection bid.

There are times I see our politicians all day on the news, talk shows etc, and it seems like a tireless job. It is. People you've known for a long time all of a sudden look at you differently. Some pull away entirely. Others try to get closer. You can see folks jockeying for power around you. When you make decisions at that level, people come at you. I personally didn't experience much lobbying, or ever get any offers to take bribes or have any kind of financial support from businesses, but I take that to be reflective of the fact that I'd gone after a prior City Council member for corruption while on the ERC, as well as my public stance of standing up for the people. My reelection campaign, in the Fall of 2020, occurred during the Biden/Trump battle and the height of Covid-19. Nobody was going outside. So as a result, it was me, my wife and son who ran around town putting up signs, blockwalking, attempting to canvas the city. I did have strong online support, but they were attacked and belittled mercilessly by a coordinated online campaign ran by the police union at the state level. I was opposed by the same guy I'd beat in 2018, who sat me down and told me when the election season started, that he wouldn't oppose me directly, we actually liked each other despite our opposing political beliefs. He wouldn't say who would be running his campaign, but I quickly found out. It was savage, nasty and Covid-19 fear accentuated all of that. The guy who won back the seat actually went on vacation for a month so he wouldn't be present in October, at the end of election season. I lost substantially.

Within a short time, less than 6 months, he was caught accepting a bribe and removed from office. This is not surprising. If your ethical stance is not absolute, you are subject to dinners, gifts, bribes. He was perhaps too open to influence. I was not.

Is honesty in politics even possible? It is possible to get elected based on your character, yes. It is much harder, to get reelected if you do not comport with the party line that those who control the local power structure demand to suit their interests. For example, I was elected by a Liberal elite, Dixicrats, here in Texas, because they believed that I would protect their affluent neighborhoods from getting rezoned and allowing duplexes and apartment complexes to be built there. And, I did, being naive and not understanding the deeper, more selfish and elitist reasons why they had supported my candidacy. I didn't understand that until after.

I lost that election in the Fall of 2020 but ran again, in 2022 for another seat. Covid-19 was receding and I had a lot of help from those selfsame Liberals. A full team of about 10 people, a sign team who was experienced and knew all the best spots, an online campaign. A strange spike in one neighborhood in the city, of over a 200% increase in voter participation, led to my loss of merely 28 votes.

Guess they didn't want me back on Council. Anyway, I sat on the Planning and Zoning Commission for a few months. My "handlers" wanted me to oppose the Mayor in my next Council bid. But then, disillusioned with politics and with the city, I moved to San Antonio.

Honesty is indeed possible, but it most definitely is not an asset.

[thepainterdoug]

Hi Mark thanks very much for this!! Have you seen the movie Eddington? if not look into it,a political battle set in the heart of the covid hysteria

[Mark]

I have not seen that movie, no. Thanks for the recommendation! Always looking for good entertainment fare, especially if it is grounded in some kind of reality! Sounds like that one will be right up my alley and I will commiserate with the character's plight.

[Szymon]

I once worked for the largest government-owned xxxxxxxx. I saw so much BS that I reported it to the corruption watchdog. The whole process was a shambles, smoke and mirrors. Just not worth it. Nothing happened. My complaint was shown to the board that did it, and my job was never reinstated. 4 years later, the same corruption watchdog department kicked the entire board out because they realised I was right and found additional evidence. Everyone in that corruption watchdog department was covering up for the public-sector gov at the time and for the media.

[shaberon]

I have not, and there's a pretty specific reason I would probably be disqualified.

That's because my affiliation is Revolutionary.

What that means, is, in the colonial era, there were British policies we objected. We didn't enter office and propose changes. We gave rifles to males sixteen years of age and up, and forced them to swear allegiance that they would fight the British on command. That's what I consider "gun control".

The form of government was immaterial; we would have just as soon continued with a King and Parliament, editing the laws we did not like.

The new country and its political offices were created by the Constitution, which was highly opposed.

Offices require you to support/defend the Constitution, and, if anyone asked me, I would say no, I promise to question, oppose, and eliminate it.

Governments and constitutions do not contain instructions for their own destruction, which would not be "politics", although it might be political.

Our main argument was this will make a consolidated government which is too powerful and open to abuse.

That's exactly what we got from it.

My Revolutionary ancestor held office in a state legislature, when states were first invented, on the Anti-Federalist platform. It's a misnomer, because the Federalists or main authors of the Constitution are not federal. A federation or confederacy has the meaning of not consolidated, being a looser arrangement with higher autonomy, so, we don't really have a federal government, it just calls itself that. It perhaps is nationalistic, if you want to pretend this is a nation of English-speaking white men. It's really not, even though it looks this way in terms of those elected.

As far as I am concerned, we fought for relief from such governments, with the intention to shelter the oppressed from other places. For example, one of the main issues was that acquiring citizenship required an Act of Parliament -- how many British would be in a hurry to grant this to Italians or Russians, or even former slaves. Not. And yet America did not open its doors very much until the 1960s -- practically pure WASP establishment.


The closest experience I would say is that I have worked with various law enforcement agencies, Sheriffs, FBI, even the Secret Service, and this is all about application of policy, the net result of political decisions and laws that have been set. Sometimes this is cut and dried. Other times, yes, you may be in compromising or deceptive positions, things can be complicated and challenging. It's the "after" of a political office that was "before." Kind of closely connected.