Witch Doctor Politicians

Witch Doctor Politicians por Aaron Ross Powell:

Imagine you’re living long, long ago. Your crops fail .. you decide some agent must be at fault.

Who? Why, that nasty neighbor always giving you the evil eye .. in desperation, you turn to your tribe’s witch doctor. He waves his arms around, chants a few chants, and tells you to slaughter some livestock. Problem solved. Except it isn’t, because next year your crops fail again. Who’s to blame this time? ..

.. he’s got a convincing response: It wasn’t me, he said. It was that neighbor. The guy must’ve gone and got his own wizard to cast a new spell—a more powerful spell—on your crops ..

This ought to sound familiar. It’s depressingly similar to how politics all too often works ..

So we shouldn’t take the claims by politicians that we need them as dispositive. Neither should we accept at face value similar claims from those dependent on politicians for their livelihoods. We humans are awfully good at convincing to believe absurd things, and we’re particularly good at it when we count on those beliefs to put food on the table.

Most of us in the western world eventually saw through the charlatanism of witch doctors, shamans, and patent medicine hucksters. It’s high time we include politicians, regardless of party, among their lot.