We, the people living in democracies tend to have one big problem: our politicians. Their behavior typically suffers from a complete lack of informed judgement, and often resembles the malicious catering to the highest bidder. “We have the best government that money can buy”, as Mark Twain said.
Now who’s to blame? We are, of course. We put them there, as Neil Tyson points out.
Whenever we vote, we reward deception more that cander. We reward quick and unsophisticated action rather than science based evaluation. We, the electorate, are the source of our bad politicians. We’ve made politics a field of societal contempt. Most of our smartest minds are abhorred by our political processes and stay as far away as possible.
Like in so many other areas of life, we need to change ourselves before we can start changing others. We need to reward cander in our daily lives and in our politicians. We need to teach each other a science based outlook on life and on policy making. We need to educate ourselves and others, so we are fit to make better decisions — especially when we vote.