In the previous article we saw the first myth: members of Congress serve us or lose the election. It’s not true. The second myth is that it’s someone’s fault.

Myth 2: Democracy, and Congress, being broken is the fault of other people, and corporations.

We all fall victim to this myth of “fault”

There is lots of finger-pointing in Washington. The Republicans blame the president and Democrats. Democrats blame the Republicans being the “party of refusal.”

Plus people blame the courts for “legislating from the bench.” People hate the Citizens United decision. And while the decision was judicially poor, it’s easily fixed by Congress passing a constitutional amendment. But Republicans refuse, with one exception, even though 78 percent of Americans and 80 percent of Republicans want to overturn it. In this case, it’s the Republican Congress’ fault, beginning with Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the house, and Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader of the Senate.

Sure, some Democrats are corrupt, too. But to me, it sure looks like it’s Republicans fault. Even I fall victim to the myth.

The truth- they can’t help themselves

Let’s take an example. Senator Inhofe is the idiot who brought a snowball to the Senate thinking it disproved climate change. Maybe he did that because he wants to stay in power, and the $459,500 given to him for his 2014 campaign from coal and oil companies lets him do that. Or maybe he’s really as stupid as he seems. But to him, what he does is appropriate. He truly can’t do any better. If my blaming him, or Democrats blaming him worked, that’d be great. But it doesn’t.

What could stop him, though, is if his own constituents blamed him. But that would take accountability. In 2008, 70% of America thought climate change was real. If Inhofe had been accountable back then, he’d have changed his tune or he’d have been kicked out. But he wasn’t, and the oil and gas companies had the time they needed to lie to the public by saying the science was undecided.

Now, surveys say that Americans are 50/50 on climate change. If that’s true, then it might be that this can’t be solved by accountability. On this one, maybe the energy industry, Fox News and the Republican Party have won for a while. After a bit more warming, bigger storms and more calamities, maybe the balance will shift.

But America is pretty united against the Citizen’s United decision. If our representatives were accountable about that, Congress would pass a constitutional amendment about it very quickly. But they’re not. They don’t report to Americans whether or not they support overturning it, so Americans can’t use it to help decided elections.

Without accountability, small groups are in charge

Why didn’t Congress pass a law disallowing suspected terrorists from buying guns? Because the Republican Congress won’t allow it, even though over 80% of Americans want it. That link is from June and the article said a tentative deal with Republicans was reached. But later, no bill was voted on in. I read another article (that I can’t find at the moment), about how a small group of pro-gun nuts, even more extreme than the NRA, scared Paul Ryan and other Republicans into submission. Did Paul Ryan announce why the bill was shelved? No. That would be accounting for his actions.

Without accountability, Congress can’t represent the people. It’s not just that the people can’t hold Congress accountable. Also, Congress has no reliable way of accounting to the public about what happened. They can’t get the public support for doing the right thing.

Sometimes a small special interest group scuttles a widely-wanted bill. Sometimes a lobbying effort, like the coal and oil industry paying Republicans to oppose climate change, wins the day. When the people aren’t in charge, these things happen.

Congress can’t fix itself. If they could, they would have already. Is there anything we can do to fix this besides an accountability system? How about just fight harder? We’ll look at that myth next.