Martian politicians

For a long time now I've believed that a desire to hold a particular public office should automatically disqualify a person from running for said office. I don't know what it is, but I have never ever, ever never met, seen from afar, or even heard rumor of a politician who faithfully did the very best that they could for the people who they are theoretically in office to serve. Most politicians are lawyers and in my experience lawyers don't believe in an objective "right" and "wrong". They seem to think that what is right or wrong depends on one's point-of-view. I think this viewpoint is either symptomatic of or a cause of their belief that truth or falsehood is all subjective as well. Sadly our politicians behaving this way seems to have poisoned the minds of many (if not most) average people into believing the same.

By way of example - and to set up those who I believe to be counter to the politician's way of thinking, scientists - let's talk about global warming, shall we. Scientific data is absolutely undeniable in showing that our life support system in the universe (this planet) is getting hotter very quickly. The NWS keeps track of global temperature data, NASA has satellites in orbit whose job is to measure the size of the polar ice caps (smaller for at least three years in a row now) and the data is open for anyone to see. NASA posts this stuff on twitter, for Pete's sake. Scientific debate on the issue is about whether it is man-made or a natural cycle (evidence suggests man-made, but it's still debatable) and about whether the system can regulate itself quickly enough to remain habitable by humans. Politicians and those who have been poisoned by them, on the other hand, still argue that global warming is not happening at all. Really!? Did I mention that the data is open for all to see?

Another example of this difference between the way politicians think and the way scientists think is reaction to the political events revolving around the Crimean peninsula. To be perfectly honest I don't know the story behind the whole Russia, Ukraine, Crimea tug-of-war. I know what American news services have said, but I'm sharp enough to realize that their information is biased in favor of American political agendas. I don't know anyone from that part of the world who can tell me the real history as lived there, so I am massively uninformed on the topic. I also know that it has nothing to do with international cooperation in space exploration, although American politicians are trying to make the two things overlap: because of America's governmental officials' stance on the Crimea issue NASA has been ordered to stop cooperation with Russia.

Oh, wait ... except in relation to the ISS. NASA is allowed to cooperate there. Because how would Americans get onto or off of the ISS without Russia? So that's okay, just not anywhere else.

Honestly guys, if Russia is going to be painted as the big bad bully here then they're bad all the way around. You can't have them be the bad guy but still use them for transport to the ISS. That's just ridiculous.

Reaction to this American foreign policy directive from astronauts and scientists pretty much worldwide has been uniformly incredulous and I believe that this reaction is a good indication of the sort of "foreign policy" that humanity should take to Mars with us. Science and technology already has many answers to global problems and the beginnings of many more answers. If governments worldwide cooperated like scientists worldwide do mankind would be much closer to solving issues like global warming, renewable energy, pollution, yada yada yada.

In my opinion, Mars should be kept politician free. Let's populate our next planet with only people who have useful contributions to make to society and see what happens. This is an opportunity to begin human society all over from scratch, let's make the most of it.