I just think that it's not practical to lump all politicians into one group and make pronouncements about them as if they aren't also individuals who are different from each other. Just because someone chooses politics as a career doesn't automatically make them a bad person who caters to their own interests, just like someone who chooses law as a career isn't automatically a bad person, or someone who heads a big business, and so on. There are good politicians and bad politicians, just like there are good practitioners of polyamory and bad ones.
It stymies me to think how it could possibly be that someone could be elected to a high political office who didn't pursue it as a career. Or how it's better to have someone inexperienced in politics elected.
Spork, if someone wanted to lump everyone in the kink community together and make blanket statements about them, you'd be okay with that? Since it's okay for you to do that to people in politics, business, law... why not just operate out of these prejudices all the time, with regard to any group of people. Just see it as a group and not a collection of individuals. That is what prejudice is, but I'll bet you're only okay with the prejudices you agree with and will rail against other prejudices you dislike.
I think that a dose of skepticism is healthy in dealing with those in high positions of power. I think that, much like dealing with tabloids and photographers if you're a movie star, those who sit in positions of power have to realistically be aware that many people will doubt their motives for wanting to do so. And I don't think that the TRULY powerful are in fact that large a group at all. Also, I question how much actual power the President really ought to be wielding all by himself. I might prefer someone who seems
good over a crooked expert, if I had to choose.
I think that the consciencious and altruistic among them are, yes, relatively few. I think that there should be term limits on Congress members and I don't think that anyone who is born into wealth, goes to a fancy expensive college that they don't have to pay for, works in the family law firm for a while, then goes on to hold office, represents my concerns or has much knowledge of what in fact my concerns might even be.
Does that paragraph describe all lawyers or all politicians, even career ones? No of course not! And I would not, upon meeting a particular politician, approach them with the assumption that they must be a rich scoundrel in a suit. But in light of the many abuses of power that we have actual documentation of, the many scandals and crimes of people in high positions of power and authority in this country, it boggles MY mind a bit that anyone would suggest we give people with a lot of power the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are basically good folks out to do good work, just blindly trust them as we would any other group of regular folks.
The problem we have is not just the fact that no one politician can ever REALLY represent an accurate set of priorities to please everybody...because each of us as individuals is quite different, no one politician can in fact ever represent ALL of the positions on various things that any one American voter cares about. I could argue for Bernie, and I really do like the guy, but some of my friends will always say, "Well, what about XYZ?" and I do have to kinda agree with what they're saying, sure...but he is still a closer fit for my interests than Trump or Hillary or well, anyone of the GOP.
This is starting to feel personal, and I wonder if you are related or friends with some people who are career politicians. Again...bear in mind that were I to meet one, I WOULD give them the benefit of the doubt in judgment of their character. But when it comes to people I
won't be meeting who get to decide matters that stand to affect my quality of life, who want to take thousands of dollars out of my pay every year when I already struggle to get by, who want to enact policies that make it impossible for me to ever consider starting the art business I dream about...people who don't have to deal with any of the problems that keep me up at night, but make rules, without consulting me or anyone, that affect my life, people who perpetually threaten to use their personal religious agendas to interfere with families and healthcare, people who can either let their crony business buddies pollute the world, or pass laws that are "supposed" to prevent that but in fact were designed to promote some wink-wink partnership they've got with their cousin's wind turbine company...people whose children will never in a million YEARS attend a public school but are thrilled to legislate the "standards" of our decidedly SUB-standard educational system... You think I should just assume career politicians and the heads of huge companies, the moguls of Wall Street are all nice, decent folks like anybody else? That there is no corruption?
You know...I don't actually know very many people who do. So if blandly smiling and assuming the best is "common sense"...it isn't very common anywhere I've ever lived.
But again. I imagine that a little bit of long-distance distrust of those of the wealthy and powerful elite, by those of us living paycheck to paycheck, is likely a small price to pay. Don't figure that Country Club Chad's tennis game suffers too much over what the peasants down here think of his daddy the Senator. But rest assured that if ever I meet him, I won't throw things.
By the by, I've got plenty of people close to me who worked for the Federal Government, too. They went overseas and got blown up because those guys in DC told them to. One of them came back so broken mentally that I couldn't be by his side anymore.
Makes political debates a lot more interesting, that's for sure. My quad is all wanting to discuss who made better points and all of this libertarian-anarchist spectrum philosophy, I'm sitting over there imagining that gravelly man-voice saying naughty, naughty things. 
