As a Jew today, loosely affiliated with a reform congregation, I’m proud of our morality to live a life as an example to others, our duty to fix an imperfect world, and that our highest holiday has us atone for our own imperfections and mistakes. At the same time, the religion seems to me to have other faults. A big one is that we have a brutal and primitive history. We rarely dwell on how susceptible we all are to basic faults that allow such evil.

I believe this is a mistake. We should fully accept that as humans, we are susceptible to justifying evil that’s hidden by our culture. We think our beliefs are part of us. We want to think of ourselves as good, so we think of our beliefs as good and true. Why inquire into a true belief? To us, its truth is obvious. But a belief can’t really be true. A belief is a way of looking at the world. It’s a lens, a view. And a view has blind spots. Evil can easily creep into blind spots.

Politics are an easy example. Liberal Jews seem blind to the evil in vilifying politically conservative Jews. Conservative Jews seem blind to the evil in vilifying liberals, just like liberals and conservatives in the rest of the country. Culture is invented, and then we get attached to it and think it’s true. Jews do it. You do it. I do it. Until we immerse ourselves in this meta-culture of seeing our own tendency to live inside of a view, we’ll continue to have false beliefs. We need to realize, and teach, that to be human is to have blind spots. To believe in ideals and rules beyond the ten commandments is to ignore those blind spots.

Let’s bring this back to political accountability. Our culture has blind spots about politics. We keep the blind spots hidden by justifying our beliefs. We blame others. Whether we blame conservatives, liberals, the party, politicians, the wealthy or our fellow Americans who don’t vote.

Let’s stop covering up the blind spots and shine a light onto “representative democracy.” It can’t be representative unless people vote on issues or have some other easy way to speak their mind and be heard. It won’t be democratic unless Congress is fully accountable to the people. Accountability can’t happen until we look closely at what it really is and create a system that delivers it.

One way of doing this is to support PeopleCount.org creating a system that supports real accountability.

Another is to help create a culture that is honest about our insufficient definition and the toll it takes. That takes you talking about it and sharing it. PeopleCount.org is happy to lead the way, but we require your support. We have no funding yet. At this point we’ve been ignored by movers and shakers, even wealthy philanthropists who claim they want to make an impact in this area. At the moment, it’s up to you.