Another fruitless election. Why bother voting for Congress?

Did you vote for a candidate (and more likely an incumbent) who will put the interests of the monied few above yours?

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Post that over every voting booth from now on. Hope and change, promised most recently by our current president and in different verbiage by politicians everywhere since I was born, do not lie ahead. Unless you are a rabid, frothing Democrat or Republican obsessed with ideological purity and achieving a stranglehold on power, choosing a member of Congress, for most of us, represents futility in the hope-and-change department.

I just don’t give a damn any more about Congress. It doesn’t give a damn about me — and most of you. Congress has amply demonstrated for at least two decades its grotesque inability to intelligently and compassionately perform its principal duties — to legislate fairly, to levy taxes sensibly, to advise and consent wisely on treaties and executive branch appointments, and to produce budgets competently.

I have remained rationally ignorant about the coming multi-billion-dollar partisan apocalypse. That’s because no matter who controls the chambers of Capitol Hill, Congress will produce nothing meaningful that will positively affect the remainder of my life. Or yours.

Why won’t that happen?

Congress has become a self-perpetuating, integrated system of bribery and extortion fueled by amounts of money mere mortals can no longer comprehend. Congress is inhabited by men and women who are at worst corrupt or at best willing, perhaps eager, to embrace moral ambiguity. In an institution populated by 535 powerful men and women who are supposed to legislate for the benefit of all, moral clarity is difficult to find. Result: The few get more; the many get less. Much less.

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