Politics, Schmolotics

     I was going to write about it, but--  It's not worth it.  Go read your favorite news outlet; go read the news outlet you like least.  Noodle around, get a feel for who's saying what and make up your own mind.

     Newsflash: Congressbeings of opposing parties don't much like one another.  There's even some dissent among members of the same parties!  Representatives are especially outspoken, Senators more subtle.  These aren't bugs, they're features!  That's how it's supposed to work. Those people are the distilled essence of our opinions (Senators were supposed to be the distilled essence of our States' opinions but the 17th Amendment undid that, alas) and -- when necessary -- they're supposed to find some resolution we'll all dislike in roughly equal measure.

     Politics isn't about what's best, it's about what works.  As Winston Churchill pointed out, representaive democracies* are terrible -- almost as bad as every system that's been tried or proposed. "Almost" is the important caveat: it's the best we've got, with the best chance of correcting the things it does wrong, sometimes before it gets entirely out of hand.  It's inherently imperfect, just as we are, but like the best of us, it aspires to be better than it is.
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* Yeah, yeah, ours is "A republic, if [we] can keep it," but as a general thing, it's Western Democracy, so we're going with the easy term.