TED CRUZ’S WINTER STORM GETAWAY AND THE DUTY OF POLITICIANS

While his home state froze over last month, its people suffering starving through one of the worst climate disasters in the region’s modern history, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gleefully boarded a plane headed toward the Mexican resort city of Cancun, perfectly content with abandoning those constituents he is paid far too much to represent.

Only after the discovery of his trip and the public controversy born soon after would Cruz promptly return and express regret regarding the decision, first avoiding as much personal responsibility as possible by framing his family’s fleeing as the result of the desires of his daughters, until finally admitting the excursion to have been a mistake altogether.

Though this was a particularly selfish and cruel situation, similar episodes have proven excruciatingly common among those representatives we have entrusted with our voice.

No, as prominent conservative journalist Ben Shapiro put it, we did not “expect Ted to go there with, like, a blowtorch and start defrosting all of the pipelines.” But it is literally the least a man with the power that Cruz has granted can do, to suffer alongside the souls he constantly insists he is doing his best to serve. Even more so, considering how much the consequences of the snowstorm and deep freeze were exacerbated by the capitalist-centric infrastructure policies he is a proud supporter of.

It is true that you will never find a voter insisting on their preferred candidate’s indisputable perfection, but perhaps expecting such prominent individuals to, at the very least, meet the bare minimum of civic solidarity is far too low a standard to hold.

The United States’ political structure, a democratic republic long-revered by its major political parties, evidently prides itself with its procedural traditions – an especially lovely one being the essential immunity those individuals who serve in the major branches, in particular, carry from any potentially terrible policy they decide to thrust upon the people.

No, it is not exactly treading new ground to criticize the American system of government and the privilege politicians instantly receive upon entering office. But it is never not worth highlighting the growing disparity existing between the American citizen and the individual whose labor has been pretty arbitrarily deemed more valuable, no matter how much their decision making deviates from the intentions of their electors, the voters. The cliché of the public’s scoff and sneer toward political representatives does, in fact, appear to exist for a reason.

That being said, it would be dishonest to claim anybody capable of perfectly pleasing even most voters could ever exist. And yet Cruz, choosing to turn his back on his fellow Texans’ agony, is emblematic of not only his own lack of selflessness, but also of how easily we willingly enable an entire class (one already holding the actual ability to dictate our future) to ignore us, without true consequence.

While holding (or, at least, proclaiming) an undeniably admirable intention to better the lives of those around them, politicians should never be allowed to attain unquestioned supremacy over the people to which they are “servants.” Supremacy, in this fashion, is not merely apparent in the direct dictation of those who hold it, but is also obvious through observation of a clear ability to avoid consequences for horrible deeds or decisions. If a representative democracy truly is capable of properly serving the collective, empowered action from politicians should solely revolve around their vow of commitment toward achieving justice for the people.