Do we really deserve them?

Freeloading journalists frequently say that we deserve the politicians we get, meaning that we are responsible for electing them so we must suffer the garbage we have. No one deserves a Mugabe or a Chavez, although they would claim to be legitimately elected, but anyone opposing them would disappear. Surely India with its strict Electoral Commission is better? Seems that out of a total of 4896 MPs and MLAs at least 1450 or 31% have serious charges against them. Of these 641 have serious criminal cases such as rape, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, robbery and extortion against them. Of the MLAs 6 have been charged with rape, 140 with murder, 350 with attempted murder, 145 with theft, 90 with kidnapping and 75 with dacoity. TOI 14 July. So why do we elect this charming lot repeatedly? Because 1. our stupid laws allow criminals to stand for election even when in prison, 2. our noble judges allow cases to drag on infinitely without punishing them, 3. criminals love politics because they are with their own kind and feel safe and 4. political parties love criminals because they can provide black money and the goons to beat up opponents. However, this does not apply to the US where laws are applied strictly and criminals are swiftly put away for prolonged periods and any party knowingly putting up criminals as candidates will be annihilated. But even here election results are difficult to explain. With women making 53% of the population one would have thought that Hilary Clinton, with her qualifications, would walk into the White House. Instead Obama, a gasbag, got elected and is now neck and neck with Mitt Romney. What is Romney's message that makes him so popular? He does not have any message except that he will cut taxes for the rich and abolish Obamacare, as the new healthcare law has been called, even though it is the same law that he himself enacted when he was the Governor of Massachusetts. Romney says that giving more money to the rich will enable them to invest more in the US and increase jobs. But will they? How will he prevent a rich man from opening a factory in China and importing cheap goods into the US? The rich man gets richer, jobs are created in China while the US gets deeper into debt. The uniforms for this year's US Olympics team have been made in China by Ralph Lauren, an American company. It was the Bush tax cuts that resulted in the present economic crisis yet large numbers of ordinary people still support tax cuts for the rich. We have seen countries where a small number of people were extremely rich and led a pampered existence while the population remained poor. Soviet Union was one such. So can we say that the Republicans are closet communists and Americans truly deserve the politicians they get?