Review: Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders by Tom A. Coburn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Coburn does an excellent job of bringing the reader behind the veiled curtain of life as a representative. Unfortunately he doesn't do as good a job as I would have liked at all times. There are times I feel like he spends too much time talking about the specific problems and solutions that could have been served by giving the reader more of a nuanced inside look at how his experiences differed from those of career politicians.

Even so, I have to say that he does a fantastic job of teaching readers how the system works. I've heard a lot of it before and I'm sure that many people have. Maybe that's part of the problem, after so long hearing about and so many attempts to change things that have never worked it's unsurprising that people have become a bit jaded and convinced they can't change the broken system.

I'm going back and redoing this review now, however, because I have spent quite some time thinking and exploring not only how that is true, but how there is a chance we may break the stalemate finally using new technology. Always in the past we have faced many obstacles of money and influence invested in the roles of preventing the citizens from having a fair voice or getting a clear look at the inner workings of Washington. This is double or especially true of the parties themselves, where there is absolutely no interest in giving the voting public an honest look at proceedings and a great deal to be had in keeping them uninformed.

Finally, the math of the propaganda-run politics is changing. The internet has made propaganda dangerous and mob rule tenuous and unpredictable. Even the people quick to use propaganda are starting to become concerned, at last, about how little control of the monster they have created they are able to retain.

The book focuses on the power structure. The two-party system is invested in keeping the power structure firmly divided between two camps: the Republicans and the Democrats. Neither of these camps answers to anyone, and they like it that way. The interventions by Putin have destabilized things. They have seriously upset the apple cart in favor of the Democrats. Identity-based politics are spreading more bigotry than ever before, and the loonies have smelled blood and come out of the woodwork.

It's time for the people who have read and understood the problems to become informed on the possible solutions. Term limits (as Coburn would have us push) can help, but they are preventative not restorative. We need a way to fight propaganda directly and stop it in it's tracks.

It's time for AI (neural networks) and open infrastructure (Open Data and FOSS) to take it's proper place protecting the public of every democratic nation. We need truth like never before. We need to have the lies, shilling and twisted logic brought down. It can be done. It must be done.

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