When the politicians pass their bills in Congress, as you are aware, sometimes the bills are hundreds of pages and sometimes over a thousand pages each. (If not more) And if you will remember from the Jack Abramhoff lobbying convictions, for which Abramhoff served prison time, the following information came out:
The staffers of some congresspersons (some congresspersons too, perhaps) were paid to change the meaning of different of bills by inserting different legal phrasing in the bills. The bribed staffers might do this because the bills were so damn long no one (certainly not the congressperson voting on them) ever read them. Who would notice the changes? (The congress persons may have been and probably were out busily collecting campaign money for their political campaigns to be re-elected.)
Changes in the meaning of bills could be made because the bills are so long and boring nobody would even notice how the bills were being secretly doctored. Do you understand this is the way the laws, rules and regulations you are expected to live by are sometimes passed.
Now why would their be bills a thousand pages long? Well, for one thing I suggest politicians are seriously deficient in the skills of Common Sense living. (Surely, you have figured this out by now no matter how low your I.Q.)
Secondly many politicians, in the tradition of the Wizard of OZ, like to bamboozle people. How else can their elections be explained without hype advertising in the media and a desire to look deep cheaply. Don’t these politicians ever shut up? (I think it is safe to say that those who talk too much think too little or think those fooled by a profusion of words.)
Their is no better way to bamboozle the voters than to throw a one thousand page bill of big words, arcane phases and legal terminology at them. (Some politicians don’t even know what is in it when they pass it.)
Now, please, don’t tell me the politicians of Washington don’t sometimes purposely use this method to bamboozle the trusting rednecks. Make whatever complicated, flooze it up, make it complicated. (Of course Moses used the Ten Commandments but Moses wasn’t addressing an over legalized society of decadent sophistical thinkers.)
Another insight you ought to consider is that nearly one half the politicians elected to Washington are lawyers . And then when arriving in Washington, they are surrounded by more lawyers to assist them. The political bodies, being heavily composed of lawyers, are simply churning out legal stuff to put everything in their group jargon, so the country will be entirely dependent on lawyers (which the politicians now have almost assured.)
There is also the fact nearly every prominent law firm in every prominent city has a political member of the law firm whose duty it is to watch out for the law firm and to be the political member of the staff. Among his or her legal duties the political member of the staff is to create bills (if possible) that demand lawyers to understand them. And if a law firm has in congress a politician who helped pass the bill, whose law firm will be able to help some business understand the bill.
Let us not forget that every new bill means more new clients. The legal emphasis in Washington is self-serving. Every thousand page law passed generally means a lawyer will be needed thousands of times.
Actually among Washington politicians the speech of legalese (a variation of Mandarin Chinese to the people) is spoken widely by the ruling few. And the lawyer politicians and their lawyer assistants mean to keep legalese the native language of the provincial legal few and the laws they strew the land with from Washington.
It is necessary to say that if we had voting directly by the people on major issues, we might rediscover understandable English of reasonable length and common dialogue in government? We might also dispense with some of the politicians in Washington who are lawyers.
Please remember lawyers are trained as sophists, that they are taught to argue for who pays, not necessarily for what is right or what is good. (That is one reason they may usually vote the party line. Party is who helps pay campaign re-election expenses, for one example.)
Do we as a nation really want nearly one half of our elite congressional rulers registered sophists speaking in a Washington “Mandarin Chinese” which is terms of legalese. Legalese is the language of our Government.
Whatever purpose that the present government use of Legalese may serve, it is not the language of the people. It would be nice for the people to hear clear English in government used once again that might be possible, I suggest, if we reduce the almost sole rule by politicians out of tune with people. (The people and the politicians don’t even share the same language anymore.) I suggest things might get better if we involved the people in participating more directly in government, so the people might vote directly on major issues.