As my old friend Julius C. used to say, "alea iacta". For those of you who don't know Julius, "the die has been cast". The stage has been set for the 2016 US presidential showdown. It's all over but the shouting; that is, all the shouting can now begin.
Maybe it was having the measles in 1956 and suffering through the disease as well as the only thing on TV -- the Republican National Convention -- that put me off (TV for one, but presidential elections for another), or the mere fact that it really doesn't matter who runs or who is elected in the end -- let's face it, nothing really changes -- at least not for the better, but for whatever reason it was, in the end, I'm not excited about this year at all, maybe even less excited than usual.
Growing up I went through the same indoctrination as everyone else, but I couldn't get all excited about it. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense. All that talk about democracy and democratic processes, well, it just never really jibed with what I saw all around me. Theory is one thing, experience is another. To reconcile these inconsistencies, I told myself that one was the ideal, the other simply the reality that we were working on to eventually come up to the ideal. It didn't take all that long to realize that there wasn't a whole lot of working-on-the-reality going on. There are too strong interests in the status quo that were, and are, willing to let the little matter of democratic ideals get in the way.
Back in those measly days, the Republicans came across as liberals (fiscal responsibility, high taxes, support for Social Security and unions, etc.) and the Democrats looked like they couldn't get their act together (Jim Crow South, voter suppression, but support for social programs and a desire for some kind, maybe any kind, of change). Remember, this was prior to the long overdue Civil Rights Movement and the first shift, in my lifetime, of the political center in America. In many regards, it looks like the parties have switched places since then, but that's not all that surprising. We know that in everyday language words can exchange meanings (e.g., for 250 years or so, "awful" meant what "awesome" means and vice versa), but in the active world of reality in which we live, this could simply be a matter of becoming what you hate.
But none of that's important, really. The problems that were known then -- gerrymandering, excessively restrictive voting legislation, too much money in politics, the Electoral College, etc. -- are still with us today. That's half-a-century of awareness of very specific and very specifically undemocratic issues, and not a single one of them has been changed for the better. Oh sure, every now and then something cosmetic has been done, but nothing of substance. And, in some regards, the situation has gotten even worse. After all, we knew in which direction change-for-the-better lay, but that wasn't the direction in which we moved. And it's not as if it would be difficult to really change any of these things:
- a simple law outlawing gerrymandering could be passed
- another law designating a simple formula for determining representation (in the House of Representatives, for example), like "1 representative for every 500,000 people" and requiring fairer districting to reflect that could be implemented
- ending voter-registration requirements; attaining a certain age automatically gives you the right to vote
But none of that ever really comes up for discussion and I haven't heard anybody actually clamoring for that public discussion either (though you can find one neatly tucked away in innocuous corners of the internet). Granted, the Electoral College -- an institution that has certainly outlived its age, but certainly not its intent -- would be more difficult to tackle, needing a constitutional amendment and all (and we all know how idolatrously sacrosanct American holds its constitution), but that money-in-politics thing got changed the most: the US has shown -- and judicially upheld -- that certain forms of bribery are not only legal, but encouraged. How much more undemocratic can you get? Of course, most Americans don't get it, and are so caught up in their self-adoration that they don't even realize that most of the rest of the world has long caught on: America is really good at saying one thing and doing another. Sometimes I think they're trying to turn it into an art form. But it isn't and it's not going to become one.
It's not that people aren't thinking about how the system could be improved, or that it's all too difficult to understand the fundamental shortcomings of a two-party system But the system America has is the system an elite 200+ years ago wanted in order to keep "the people" in their place, so naturally, it's the system that the current elite are simply loathe to change. Why should they? It works very much in their favor. For example,
- 75% of Americans want terms limits for Congress, but there are none.
- 63% of Americans want to get rid of the Electoral College, but they've still got it.
- 58% of Americans want federally funded healthcare for all, but they've only got a system most of them don't want anyway.
- The vast majority of Americans support some kind of enhanced background checks for buying guns, but are they going to get any? You know the answer.
Let's face it, what the people want in America is hardly the issue. Any substantial, visible change has to go through Congress and it's obvious that Congress isn't about to do anything but work for its owners. The people just don't count. They're there for the show, and a show is what we're all about to get, once the real campaigns are launched. It may just be the worst show to be staged thus far.
In the midst of a system that is as overtly corrupt and undemocratic as this one, we also have a certain mentality at work that gives me pause to wonder. It is in presidential election times that one gets to hear the truly bizarre. America is the only modern, allegedly democratic nation in which the phrase "a wasted vote" makes any sense. The very phrase oozes with undemocratic sentiment, but it is thrown about and used as if it were somehow meaningful. The mere concept should be enough to make all our hair stand on end, yet in America it somehow does make some sort of distorted sense: in a consciously designed and implemented two-party system, third parties are per definitionem outside the system; they don't count ... and they never counted, and as long as the system remains as it is, they never will count.
(As an aside: Bernie never stood a chance. Had he not tried to elbow his way into the Democratic Party, he wouldn't have gotten even the minimal media coverage that he got. Don't believe me? Ask Jill Smith or Gary Johnson. Now that we know he never stood a chance in the Democratic Party, what option did Bernie really have? First past the post wins, and that's that. Now his still recalcitrant supporters who know they have been more or less blocked out of the system are being harangued not to waste their votes in this oh, so important "historical" election. Go figure.)
In the end, though, because of the way in which the system has been set up and in light of the fact that for as democratically inclined most Americans like to think themselves, barely more than half of the voting-age population ever makes it out to cast a vote for their delegate to the Electoral College anyway (which I don't take as a sign of a particularly healthy democratic mindset). And when we consider that traditionally, around 4% of these will waste their votes on a hopeless cause, and that, at least in the last 10 elections the winner has garnered on average around a mere 51% of the vote, we have the, allegedly, most powerful person in the world being elected by about 25-27% of the US voting-age population. That, my fellow Americans, is minority rule. It takes a vivid and creative imagination to spin that into an exemplary model of democracy.
This is, however, how a two-party systems works (and how it was always intended to work). Moreover, the most fundamental assumption underlying the system, the one that should, at least in principle, make it acceptable or at least remotely viable, is that whoever is running is worth voting for in the first place. There was a time -- in my measly and post-measles days -- when I thought for a moment that such elections were about positions and policies. We're all allowed to be naive in our youth. In the meantime, as this latest presidential primary circus has shown, positions and policies apparently don't matter at all. The whole affair has degenerated into little more than a popularity contest. One party has no real policies and positions at all, just a lot of hate and fear, and the other has some, but they're the same, old same-old, regardless of how "progressive" the internal opposition was in the run-up to the nomination. I find it exceedingly interesting that there's more talk now about unity and togetherness than there is about anything substantial. Trump is being sold as anti-establishment, though he's anything but anti-elite; Clinton is being sold as a rallying point, because she's established in the elite. Somehow I'm still missing "the people" in this alleged democratic adventure.
What is more, one has to search far and wide to find actual engagement with and analysis of the Democratic Party platform, for more than anything, this election is already being pitched as "historic" because a woman is running (though not alone, nor for the first time, but it just so happens for one of the only two parties that count). Already we are being encouraged, in particular women are being encouraged, to vote for the woman, merely because she's a woman. I don't know about you, but that strikes me as a particularly weak political argument, and there's nothing democratic about it. There's a lot at stake in this election, that much I will concede, and that's all the more reason in my mind to think really hard about if you're going to vote; if you are, how you're going to vote; and most definitely what you are actually voting for. The spin-wheels are already squealing that anything is better than Trump, but not why it is that only Clinton is that "anything".
And so, my fellow Americans, he we are, a decade-and-a-half into the 21st century and we're about to witness what promises to be one of the most unreasonable, dirty, hateful, mean, confrontational and potentially violent presidential election cycle ever. Oh, how far we have come. Oh, how rich and reasoned is our understanding of democracy and the democratic process. Oh, how proud we must be. This, my fellow Americans, is apparently the best we can do.
Though disappointed in my measly days, along the way I had hoped that we would learn and grow, just as all my adult guides expected of me. In my youthful naivite, I thought that's how the world worked. It doesn't. Learning, apparently, is what others are supposed to do. Still, I'm older now, just a little bit smarter in spite of it all, but not necessarily wiser. What I have seen this year will certainly be more than enough for the next four years, to be sure. I shudder when I think of the short-term. I'm concerned deeply for all our futures.
What I have seen that pains me most though is that we have apparently, been forced into submission to a "system" which has come to exhibit and represent all that it was meant to overcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment