Politics

[supergee]

There simply has to be a point at which winning an election is not worth it. There simply has to be a point at which the people who make their living in politics get so revolted by the vandals and vampires in their business that they begin to self-police it, not in the pious fashion of Danforth's eulogy, but purely out of pragmatic self-preservation. There has to be a point at which they look at the political salience of running against "government" and realize that they're spitting on themselves in a mirror. They are undermining confidence in the product that they're trying to sell, poisoning the medicine they're peddling. There simply has to be a point to it all besides winning. If there is no longer a point at which that is true, then they are lost, and we are lost, and self-government becomes a psychosis with no solution. There simply has to be that point, or faith is a sucker's game.

--Charles P. Pierce