A science blog I like to read published a post of interest to me this week showing the bonuses to democracy if our legislators were chosen at random. This is a subject I am very interested in because it is one of the only systems that we could employ in order to ensure that our legislators do not become a carefully groomed breed of absurdly rich, created in order to benefit their peers while the workers of the world suffer a gradual grinding into dust. If we were given a chance to run our own lives, we could make this world a better place; a place made for the betterment of all our sisters and brothers. Not only does this ring true in our hearts when we look at the world the ultra-rich have created for themselves at our expense – but science is showing us that it makes sense as well!
While the article reference at this blog says that a combination of elected officials and randomly selected citizens is the most efficient, my reading suggests this is mostly as a precaution against rocking the boat too much against the interests that have controlled society for far too long. Sure, this combination shows benefits to our society and would be a big improvement over the system as it currently stands, but as leftists we want to entirely reshape this world – not merely improve the efficiency of the one we have.
Furthermore this article only considers a two-party system, which we have already seen for centuries – leaves a lot to be desired. It is a perfect design for choking off real change. Do away with so-called ‘parties’ and team-politics and instead have a body of people interested in furthering the interests of their respective communities and amazing things will happen.
The result, long seen by anyone even casually paying attention, of the Republican primaries has finally revealed. Mitt Romney will, much like John McCain was, be painted as the archetype of out-of-touch wealth. Which he is, and he definitely should be! He absolutely is a man who has made millions of dollars by exploiting both his fellow Americans and a system made to expand the wealth of those who have it. What is unfortunate is that the lesson being taught in this little tutorial in class consciousness for America is that voting for Obama will somehow… defeat Mitt Romney or those like him? I love that Americans are being shown just how completely far removed politicians like McCain and Romney are from the people who actually vote for them, but I hate that they are being fooled into thinking Obama or the Democrats are any different or willing to destroy this inequality.
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Our government does not represent us. The politicians may speak endlessly of mandates from the people, or that their elections are messages by the electorate demanding the ever more repressive policies they introduce – but it’s demonstrably false. Voter turnout is always low, and polling nearly always shows that popular opinion is against federal opinion. We have wars that no one wants, drugs policies nobody obeys, ever dwindling services that people want and need. AT this point is it even a surprise that Congressional approval rates are at 5%, with only 1% rating them as “excellent”? Of course the 1% love them. But now, polling shows that people would rather have their representatives chosen at random than the sociopathic millionaires they have today! Sounds awesome, sign me up.
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If this election’s primary season for the Republican nomination hasn’t presented enough evidence to show us the truth of this, then take a look at this article on io9. Turns out, democracies only work when large swathes of uninformed individuals side with a perceived majority. Well no kidding. What else would cause an endless cycle of individuals voting against their every interest, relieving themselves of any ounce of power they might have held, and placing it in the hands of sociopathic millionaires? The fallacy that we are taught, that democracies only work when people are informed, is proven false every 2 years in America yet we go on believing we can make a difference in those booths.
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Fat and happy from a wonderful family gathering over the holiday weekend, I returned to check my Facebook account this morning and was greeted with a liberal friend’s usual in-your-face Obama infatuation. This time, in the form of a supposed George Clooney quote basically putting down anyone who isn’t satisfied with Obama by making the point that Republicans could be made happy voting for him. I have pictured it for you here (click for enlarged indignation):
I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am. Democrats eat their own. Democrats find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.’ I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for people whom you’ve elected. If [Obama] was a Republican running, because Republicans are better at this, they’d be selling him as the guy who stopped 400,000 jobs a month from leaving the country. They’d be selling him as the guy who saved the auto-industry. If they had the beliefs, they’d be selling him as the guy who got rid of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ who got Osama bin Laden. You could be selling this as a very successful three years.
-George Clooney
First of all, it’s a pet peeve of mine anytime I hear some fucking celebrity tell me anything about politics, whether I agree with them or not. I don’t need some mega-rich asshole, who pretends for a living, to tell me what my best interests are. However, since I suspect that this election year we will be seeing a lot of attacks on people who are sick of Obama – let’s indulge Mr. Clooney.
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Throughout the Obama presidency, self-styled “progressive” liberals have invested so much of their identity and worth into electing and defending a man who has, in almost every sense, used them to advance an agenda no different from their worst enemy, George W. Bush. For every fundamental policy of the liberals’ once mouthed by Obama and subsequently ignored or destroyed, these people are presented with the option of admitting the error of believing and voting for another rich politician who has spent his or her entire career benefitting from the system exactly the way it is, or finding some way of twisting their logic into accepting another defeat and being proud of it. The banner raised over the heads of the individuals who choose the latter strategy is the eloquent and seemingly inarguable truth of, “Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good.” The meaning of course is nothing more than a defense of yet another destruction of your trust as its adherents are forced to pledge fealty to another crime committed in their name.
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When Republican Governor Scott Walker instituted destructive new rules for public unions, public outcry was enormous. I watched the news and saw pictures of thousands of protestors decrying unfair treatment of Wisconsin’s workers. It was obvious the energy was there, so what did the unions do to funnel that energy? Into a fucking voting booth where anything worth your time goes to die. In reality, if the union bosses wanted anything meaningful to happen to reverse these new limitations, they would have shut the state down with mass wild cat strikes within and without the public sector. It was obvious that the public was on their side, so why not? Because the union bosses have become part of the establishment, stationed to maintain the status quo rather than upset it. Now, we can look and see what a pitifully meaningless outcome has come from funneling all that anger into a voting booth.
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If voting were actually important to our legislators, why would they make it so hard to do? Thinking logically, such an important task should be made possible to complete with a minimum of effort so that all could make their voices heard and the transition of government could take place with all its constituents in mind, yes? We would want to make sure our “democratic” society actually functioned as such and that the opinions of the people were enshrined into the fabric of that very society. However, that doesn’t seem to be the goal of our voting laws. Practices that make it nearly impossible for large swaths of our society to vote ensure that those already with the power are the only ones overseeing it. As such, there is no such thing as a transition in government when the powerful are the only ones passing the baton.
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Coming off the discussion in the comments section of my last post, I wanted to talk more (or maybe just repeat myself some more) about the voting practices found in our society today. The U.S. government and the U.S. corporate media are ramping up the propaganda campaign for the next presidential election charade next year, so we’re all getting our regular doses of programming that feeds us with the merits of our electoral system and the importance of “doing your part” and participating. As if the solution to the myriad of troubles facing every one of us can simply be solved by tuning in once every couple of years and selecting someone listed D or R.
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As the distraction known as the 2012 Presidential election looms, liberal friends of mine are becoming increasingly defensive in their adoration of Obama and the elected Democrats in general. This blind allegiance is increasingly confusing to me because these people are otherwise intelligent and have opinions I respect. Why are we so stuck in this false dichotomy and forced allow such criminality to be committed in our names as long as the team doing it has the right initial next to their names?
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