Can a party be ‘Entitled’ to more seats?

The headline of this particular opinion piece says it all. Our wonderful President Donald Trump has finally said what many who are elected and serve from the local to the national level of government can come to believe after being in office for a while, that they are entitled to keep their seat.

What do the voters know about running the country anyhow? They don’t have a clue about special interest groups, lobbyists, procurement procedures, Constitutional law, and all the values and norms that have been the model of governments around the world for nigh on decades of American global imperial power. (Because let’s be honest, we might not consider our nation an empire, but we are all but one in name.)

And the longer that individual politicians serve? My experience personally has been mixed on this level.

Look at a guy like Phil Gingrey. Now I interviewed the former congressman who represented the 11th District some eons ago, when Americans were still fighting over Obamacare and the Tea Party was popular. Conservatives believed then that the government was spending too much money on too many programs, and cuts were justified.

Now when I sat down to interview the former Congressman, I came prepared. I had topics I wanted to cover, because of all the members of the House of Representatives at the time he was one of the few doctors. I setup a camera, I asked tough questions, I did my research about his campaign contributions even.

Yet what I got out of the interview was the same talking points you’d expected from the political class we’ve come to both admire and abhor in our nation over the past decades. A view that condescends “I know what I’m doing, you don’t, so let us experts figure this out for you and keep living your life, bud.”

Gingrey finished his term in office after 12 years serving the 11th District, he gave up his seat to run for the U.S. Senate and finished fourth in the primary. Did he throw a fit and complain, claim the election was rigged against him? No. Because he understood something that many have forgotten across this land who are elected to serve: IT IS NOT YOUR SEAT. YOU JUST HOLD IT FOR AS LONG AS WE SAY.

Now we’re under the 14th District locally, and are represented by who many would consider insane. Jewish Space Lasers and all.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually kind of the perfect example of what I mean by entitlement here. She goes on talk shows, writes books, complains about having to spend her own money on re-election since she won’t take outside money (or donors have decided she isn’t worth the cost) and generally has gotten used to being a member of the House of Representatives. Making six figures for doing the least amount of work possible in this nation, and the most amount of complaining about everyone being against her.

Doesn’t that sound like a contemporary entitled politician to you?

I say this to reiterate the point that clearly the GOP have lost focus of over the past few years regaining their power after the Democrats completely blew the last four years they were able to govern. They feel entitled to run things because, well… we let them.

We’ve let this happen, America. We’ve let our politicians decide that whatever our thoughts are as individuals or collectively as a nation don’t matter anymore, that we are completely wrong in our notions about how things are supposed to work in the United States. So they strongarm, gerrymander, pass laws to restrict voting access, claim that elections are rigged and illegals are voting. Cajole and trick us into believing they are on OUR side in life, are willing to fight against those commie liberals who are wanting to give your jobs to illegals and your money to welfare queens. SOME of these political figures might be true believers, really want to do the right thing for the country but are forced to tow the party line or be replaced in the next election with a primary challenge.

That’s when you know you’re compromised, when it becomes an entitlement to the leadership of the nation. When their understanding of right and wrong based on their own individual beliefs and knowing full well they are doing a disservice to their constituents back home with their votes is ignored because they want to keep their job.

Being a politician isn’t a job. It is a calling, it is a service to your community, your state, your nation. You only get to do it so long as those who cast their ballot allow you to do so. Anything else would be considered a tyrant, dictator, the worst names you can think of in history for bad leaders.

So when I hear El Presidente claiming that GOP members in Texas are entitled to more seats in the House of Representatives through political trickery, I hear the same tired crap I’ve heard all my life. The level of “I deserve this because I’m better than you” is dripping off of such a statement.

Because even the President didn’t learn in 2020 that his loss wasn’t because of rigged machines or bamboo ballots being stuffed into drop boxes during the middle of COVID. It was that he forgot that he isn’t entitled to serve as President. He’s not entitled to make more riches off of the nation, or to keep an airplane donated by Qatar. He isn’t entitled to take everything over.

YOU AND ME are letting this happen. We’re not standing up to our political leaders in a way that forces them to listen. We’re acting in a way that will assure that one day soon we’ll no longer be a nation of rules and laws. We’re acting spoiled and entitled, like small children who throw temper tantrums when we don’t get our way.

A SMALL FEW have taken up arms and tried violence as an answer, which is always the worst possible way to try and win the day in any context. Trying to harm or kill political leaders only hardens the resolve of those who you are against, and ultimately gives them the permission to take draconian and immoral steps toward quashing any resistance to their will.

But here’s the other problem folks. We’ve completely stripped our nation of the concept of accountability, so why shouldn’t the political leaders in the GOP try for such a scheme? Why shouldn’t they blatantly redraw the maps even though they have no real legitimate argument to stand on for doing so other than “President Trump wants it.”

Oh sure, the Texas House leadership might say this about flooding, and the emergency measures before their legislative body are needed immediately to help save lives. But underlying all of this is that pesky gerrymandering that the President wants, and well… Texas doesn’t want to disappoint, right?

Entitlement. A party in a majority Republican state believes they can issue arrest warrants for Democratic members who refuse to show up and there be no consequences down the line for them? That this won’t come back one day to haunt them?

History doesn’t forget these actions, not easily. We might temporarily let the issues of the day cool in our minds while the world moves onto the next new set of chaotic craziness we’ve come to expect from day-to-day living over more than two decades since the turn of the millennium, but folks will remember what the Texas GOP did and there will be a day that those members who are calling for arrests warrants for their colleagues on the other side of the aisle will wish they hadn’t undertaken such actions.

Politicians do this because they feel entitled to do so.

Maybe it is time they learn their terms in office do come with expiration dates.

Otherwise we could be in for dark times in the near future.