Nowhere is this confusion more apparent than the current political discourse in the USA. Everyone seems to blame the President for the country's problems. But Donald Trump is a symptom of the country's deeper issues, he is certainly not responsible for everything that is going wrong with America.
Our brains like to simplify - to cling to simplistic explanations. "If only DJT were not the President, ..." the democrats like to say.
But what about the system that put him in power?
George Carlin made a brilliant observation:
"Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here…"
Instead of focusing all our energy on one man, why don't we think of systemic issues.
1) The Two-Party System
The two-party system has a severe "lumpiness" problem - it lumps beliefs that are utterly illogical. For example, if you are "pro-life" i.e. you believe in saving lives, then you are forced to support guns, which take lives!
Suppose someone (only for the sake of logical consistency) believes that lives should never be taken (either by mothers or by guns), then there is no political party that voices their beliefs. [Not to mention the whole "pro-life" argument itself makes little sense but that is besides the point.]
John Adams put it bluntly:
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
A lot of voters who did not like the current President ended up voting for him because they couldn't bring themselves to lump other opposing beliefs into the rival candidate.
2) The Electoral College
This dead horse has been flogged many times over, so I won't repeat the arguments here.
Systemic problems are the real reason why Donald Trump got elected.
Maybe it is time to direct the anger elsewhere.
