I’ve been reading a lot lately from various web blogs that many people are stating their belief that, whether Republican or Democrat, they’re all one and the same any more. That, regardless of what their stance may be on any given issue, that all the major political players within the beltway are owned by corporate America.

There is a lot of truth to this, unfortunately. But I sense something else at play here. Something more basic, but no less tragic; the “fast food” syndrome has overcome our government.

Grahame Broadbelt, of Demos blog, states the problem well:

But it seems to me that political parties must be more than containers for a collection of modern day consumers seeking the instant satisfaction of getting their issue attended to. As political parties widen their attempts to be that container (by trying to appeal to every interest, every sliver of opinion, every issue), they in turn look fragmented, disconnected and rootless. And all the time their constituencies are shrinking.

What we are seeing is a fragmentation of our social and political concerns into bite’sized chunks appropriate to our poor attention spans and intellectual diet. Such a fragmentation invades our discourse, pollutes our narrative and ends up with lots of really clever people sitting round a table not managing to talk about what political parties are actually for. Call me naive, but I thought political parties were about the development and enactment of political ideology (remember that; we used to talk about it a lot in the days before fizzy drinks and fast food).

No doubt we Americans seek instant gratification. In our discontent with our government, maybe we should reserve some of that finger-pointing for ourselves.