Monday, November 26th, 2007 - 8:56 PM

Corruption Sucks

Politics. Ugh.

I’m not particularly anti-Hillary (or particularly pro-Hillary), but someone pointed out to me that “Vote for Hillary Online is so dedicated to making sure Hillary Clinton wins this election that [they’ve] started a program that rewards those of you who post positive replies about Hillary on political blogs.” Ouch. I realize that’s probably an attempt to use the usual press-bribing tactics in this new fangled Internet world, but I hope it fails to scale so we can finally get some real truth.

Maybe I’m a weirdo, but I like honesty and sincerity, and it bothers me that the word “politics” has evolved to have almost the exact opposite meaning. I don’t think I’m a weirdo though (in this regard). I think the Internet is increasing the availability of truth by creating a scale of publication where it’s less practical to control the “press” with money.

If this “getting paid to say good things” move actually goes forward, hopefully people will respond to positive comments about Hillary by pointing back to this offer, resulting in an overall negative impact.

Let’s promote politicians based exclusively on how well we think they can do the job.

While we’re at it, let’s seek to advance our own careers by seeking positions where we sincerely believe that we can improve things more effectively than the other candidates (whether we’re in politics or not), even if that means sometimes stepping aside for a more qualified person. Maybe that seems naive. I guess it depends on what you want from life.