An Expansion on the Problem of Politics

So, a few weeks ago, I wrote this. I’ve been thinking about it a bit more because of course we have an election upcoming - the most important one of our lives™! The fate of the nation is at stake! The very end of democracy looms! We will either promote an identity cypher to the Presidency, or a man who will destroy all that we know and love - just like he did when he was President before. While almost all of our attention is directed that way, we will quietly re-elect 95% of the incumbents to Congress - the people who annually decide how much to tax and spend, and who have since 2020 been spending a trillion dollars more than we take in as taxes (and have transformed supposedly one-time expenditures meant to deal with a one-off shock to the economy into core appropriations that mean the end of governance if not maintained and in fact increased).

Now the triviality and absurdity ought to be obvious enough, but this clown show isn’t just about the clowns in the spotlight. It is equally about the audience. You, who are entertained by this spectacle, who are invested in believing that your vote matters - you are just as important as either of the lead characters. Your role is to validate this parody, to treat it as though it deserves dignity and not scorn. 150 million of us did the last time around, and presumably will again.

I’ll be generous and presume that 80% of the voting public isn’t very bright and is going to vote based on how they feel, and of those feelings the most important is fear. Which candidate scares you the most - the cackling DEI lover of democracy¹ (who has never won a single delegate to her party’s nominating convention) or the crude and mercurial con-man (who doesn’t release his taxes because it would be bad for his brand)². I said generous because there is no way you can be intelligent and decide to vote for either of them, so really we’re talking over 95% of actual voters. It will be interesting to see what kind of turnout we get for this election.

So there are two points to make about the electorate here. One is that not everyone votes, and this is generally regarded as a moral and civic failure on the part of those who do not. The second is that those that do vote, don’t do so very intelligently, which should make you question the value of voting in determining how this country is to be governed. But doing that, questioning the sanctity of our civic temple is a sure way to be dismissed as a crank. It shouldn’t be.

The truth is, you probably believe your vote has greater value than someone else’s. You obviously believe your vote is of greater value to society than the vote of anyone that votes for the candidate you oppose. Yet all of those votes are in fact equal, whether cast by a moron or a genius, by someone morally upright or dissolute, or perhaps cast by someone not even legitimately entitled to voting. Now you may display a false magnanimity for public consumption, but underneath that you have to be seething - how could all of those idiots vote the way they did? Were they just stupid, or were they evil? The point is, you know that their vote shouldn’t be held equal to yours, because you are better than they are. The beauty of this is, it doesn’t matter which party/candidate you support - the position is the same, at least when you lose. Of course when you win it is proof of the righteousness of you and those like you. Yay democracy.

Perhaps you begin to see how small-minded the act of voting is. Perhaps you begin to see how half-hearted your commitment to equality is. And that isn’t an entirely bad thing. Our belief in equality is what dooms us. The reality is, those votes shouldn’t be equal, and there are a whole lot of people that just shouldn’t be voting. The problem is - how to weed them out (and accepting it if you are one of those that gets excluded). The word that will immediately spill out of your lips is “fair” - it isn’t fair if you are excluded.

I’ll tell you what isn’t fair. That a person born in this country, that could not pass the citizenship test that naturalized persons must pass before voting, is allowed to vote. Are you afraid you couldn’t? You should be, research indicates that a large portion of our electorate would fail the citizenship test. Yet they vote. Because equality, and fairness. I don’t even have to make mockery of those words - everyone who spouts them does that for me. How is it fair that someone who makes no contribution to our civic life, that is a parasite on society and taxpayers - how is it fair that that person gets to vote? How is it fair that those who benefit most from the public purse have an equal say with those who only pay into that purse? Imagine the household where the breadwinner has less to say (or no say at all) about household expenditures than those who live off of his work? Talk about a disincentive for family formation!

Any time I’ve debated a liberal/progressive about taxation, I’ve always inquired as to what exactly a fair share of the tax burden is for the wealthy (technically high earners, not high net worth). The only answer I’ve ever gotten is more than what they pay in now. Every one of those people has exactly the same vote as I do - damn straight that isn’t fair.

“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

1. In the aftermath of her aborted 2020 primary campaign, it came out of her camp that the voters (in Democratic primaries) were racist and misogynist and that was why she had no delegates. If she loses this time around, you’ll be hearing that a lot more.

2. If you ask a number of Trump voters why they voted for him, some will tell you that it was an act of defiance to the supporters of the status quo (Republican and Democrat alike) - the giant middle finger to their faces. That’s not a very rational answer of course, but that’s illustrative of what motivates votes.