Here are some truths I learned from following politics over the years.

People who know nothing about politics have the exact same vote as the people that do.

Politicians may give lip service about future generations, but their concept of “future” is the next election.

Whenever a policy is successful, whether it is to reduce crime, lower inflation, create jobs, or a foreign affairs initiative, the people quickly accept the achievement as the way things will always be, forget the way it was, and then go back and elect the very people whose policies caused the problems in the first place.

The best policy is a campaign slogan that fits on a bumper sticker. Anything more detailed will overwhelm the majority of voters.

Likewise, repetition of a simple concept is much more effective than comprehensive speeches on the major issues.

Voters vote against a candidate more often than they vote for a candidate.

Smearing and demonizing opponents are more effective in a campaign than presenting ideas.

Some politicians enjoy trashing corporations and Wall Street nearly as much as they enjoy taking campaign donations from them.

No matter a leader’s foreign policy, the opposition will always maintain that their country lost respect in the world because of that policy. The opposition always pledges to make their country respected again.

Every candidate promises to bring change, stress the need to change, and the value of changing for the sake of change. It is not until they are elected that they believe it is better to stay the course than to change.

The United States is the most affluent country the world has ever known, where even the poor arguably lead better lives than kings and queens who lived a few hundred years ago. Yet, making Americans believe that they are poor, oppressed victims is easier than I ever dreamed.

Big corporations and wealthy individuals are only bad when they support the other political party.

Voters and the media are more concerned with following the polls, as if a political campaign was a sporting event, than understanding the issues.

Even though it is the U.S. Legislative Branch that is actually responsible for the Federal Budget (since they generally disregard the President’s budget proposal), the President is credited for budget surpluses and is blamed for budget deficits. Why then, would any member of Congress or the Senate risk unpopularity, and vote to lower funding for an item in the budget?

You receive a very different impression when you watch a political speech or event on C-SPAN without the interference of journalists, than if you only listen to the journalist’s personal and biased interpretation afterwards.

Taxation is no longer about just raising money for the government, but rather a political weapon to use against those who support the opposition.

The people whose job it is to report the news seem to spend more time deciphering and debating the polls than informing the voters about the issues.

Political speeches can influence some people, but television, movies, music, and the news media determine the country’s culture, the framing of the argument, and ultimately the path of the country.

Never assume that a politician will be defeated simply because they lack intelligence, do not understand the issues, cannot explain their positions, and are generally incompetent.

Personal gaffes are evidence of the stupidity of some politicians, and evidence of "folksiness" and "relatability" for others.

People want governments off their bodies and out of their bedrooms until it is time to pay for the Viagra and birth control pills.

Large corporations are devoted capitalists when it comes to profits, but committed supporters of socialism when they produce losses.

The Roman concept of "Bread and Circuses" – or the appeasement of the public through superficiality – still works quite well in the twenty-first century.

Despite what the public believes, most people enter politics with good intentions.

However, the public is correct when they believe that those good intentions evolve very quickly into personal empowerment and enrichment. Sadly, voters acquire most of their election information from political ads, and are preoccupied with a candidate's image and personality, so they seldom see those very traits in their own elected officials.

There is far too much preoccupation with whether some legislation will pass than what the legislation actually does.

Throughout history, many dreamers with grand visions of utopia acquired power. Tragically, the people under those dreamers too often paid a terrible price for those visions.

Politicians cite "majority rule" when the public agrees with them, and “minority rights” when the public does not agree with them.

When they do not receive the majority vote, the minority simply turns to the courts to overturn the majority’s will.

Einstein proved that time is relative. Politicians proved that truth is relative.

Politicians love to announce their policies in grandiose style, but their "visions" are seldom concerned with details. It is the reason the wars on poverty, drugs, homelessness, obesity, unemployment, and illiteracy have failed.

When push comes to shove, politicians love to shield themselves from criticism by hiding behind the phrase, "But it's for the sake of the children."

The only time a politician is at a loss for words or does not have answers to basic questions is when they are in the middle of a scandal.

Politicians really do represent the will of the people. If they did not, they would not be overwhelmingly reelected. The next time a politician says or does something stupid, reflect on what it reveals about your fellow voters.

Politicians pleaded with us to send them more money and grant them more power so they could serve us better. We obliged, and now it is we who are serving them.

Considering the high percentage of lawyers in public office, apparently, earning a law degree means that you are more qualified to be an elected official than doctors, engineers, scientists, educators, business leaders, academia, inventors, technology and health care specialists, and every other profession combined.

The Bible says that money is "the root of all kinds of evil." Politicians believe that more money can solve all kinds of problems. Does anybody else notice a connection there?

In America, both Republicans and Democrats accuse each other of shredding the U.S. Constitution. This is still arguably better than the U.S. Supreme Court, who ignores it completely.

The older I get, the more Supreme Court decisions and rationale seem to make as much sense as the Braille lettering on drive-thru ATMs.

If there is ever another world war, we should hire the IRS to develop the code to encrypt our secret messages. No foreign enemy could ever break it.

In general, people do not object to war. They just oppose losing a war and the casualties associated with war. Amazingly, many people do not see a link between the two.

In addition, the longer the period between wars, the less opposition there will be for another war.

The United States of America once fought a war to gain independence from a King. But watch any State of the Union address, and you will see a President acting like a king addressing his royal subjects.

There has been a lot of talk about voter identification and voter rights. Yet, nothing erodes voter's rights more than the judicial activism that overturns the will of the people, and the vast unelected bureaucracies that pass regulations, and decree penalties, without any accountability to the people they supposedly serve. This is legislation without representation, and is tantamount to tyranny.

Our politicized culture has bastardized the English language. Words and phrases like "hate," "terrorism," "deniers," "Holocaust," "cuts," "compassion," "racist," "sexist," "bigot," "immoral," "slavery," "hate crime," "offended," and "separation of church and state," have meanings today that people just a generation ago would not recognize.

Feigning offense today at nearly everything that is said, is just a tactic to gain the moral high ground, and silence opposition. People now claim they are personally offended, when what they really mean is that they disagree.

How long will it be before reading a Bible will be a sign of political extremism?

If the Old Testament prophets were alive today, is there any doubt they would be shouted down at universities, ridiculed by Hollywood, and denigrated by the media? And what does that tell us about whose side the prophet's critics are on?

The young people of the 1960s that proclaimed to "never trust anyone over thirty" and "question authority" are now running our country. Of course, they now expect us to give them our complete trust and never question their authority.

The public complained about the old Blue Laws, which kept businesses from opening on Sunday; so they overturned most of them. Now I hear people complain about businesses being open on Sunday, but blame greed and capitalism.

Many politicians understand the U.S. Constitution about as well as the two thousand plus page bills for which they vote without reading.

The Federal Withholding Tax on wages is the greatest sleight of hand since the serpent tricked Eve in Eden. Because of the hidden nature of the tax, workers actually believe that how much money they get back from the IRS at the end of the year is more important than their total taxes paid for the year.

Does anyone else believe that politicians really want properly constructed roads and bridges? If infrastructure projects endured, then no workers would be hired to maintain and repair them.

Too many people believe that a country can actually borrow and spend its way to greater prosperity. Apparently, they are either unaware or completely ignore similar economic policies by impoverished nations in Latin America and Africa over the past century.

It was "for the sake of the children" that gave us both the prohibition of alcohol and the repeal of the prohibition of alcohol. Likewise, it was for the sake of the children that we began an unsuccessful war on drugs and are now considering legalizing many drugs. Of course, it is the adults that will do the partaking, and not the children.

Over ninety percent of the national media vote for one political party. Yet they lecture the rest of America about the lack of diversity in the workplace.

Journalists are wanna-be politicians who either lack the courage to run for public office, or are not clever enough to hide the skeletons in their closet.

I have lost count of the times a political party brought the people to a fevered pitch over some national issue, only to continue the same policy or ignore the issue once they acquire power.

The public complains about politicians holding public office too long, re-elect their representatives anyway, and then complain that things never seem to change.

If you give any political group everything they want, they will just create a new list of more things they want.

Politicians are always telling us that immigrants are exceptionally hard working, and, consequently, we need more of them. But the term "hard working" is relative. Doesn’t that imply that some non-immigrants are not hard-working? And if so, to whom are they referring?