Elections and Democracy
Few of the important issues of this strange venture called human life have easy answers. Democracy, or so it seemed for some time, seemed the ultimate answer to responsible government. The people choose the solutions, what could be better than that? The clearest weakness of democracy is prejudice against this group or that group. Often the Supreme Court has to protect minorities. But, over time, people have slowly, and sometimes rapidly, as in the case of gay marriage, let others have rights they long have had. When this country started out with this democracy thing, it was pretty much landowning white protestant males who had all the rights and level playing fields. Over time, more and more groups got the same rights including blacks, Jews, women, children, handicapped, gays, Catholics, and so on. Religious prejudices hang the toughest as might be expected if these groups all feel God is on their side. Even if they all read the same scripture, splits can occur and this intra-squad religious ‘war’ can be more vicious than any other war (i.e. Ireland and the Middle East). The irony of religion in history is that organizations created to bring peace, prosperity, and good will to others can end up doing just the opposite. It just seems so inane and dolt-headed.
But over time some very insidious developments have impacted greatly on any successful democracy. One is the current infusion of massive amounts of money into campaigns. It coast 2.8 million to elect Lincoln, 300 million to elect Reagan over Carter, and 1.5 billion to elect Obama over McCain, and 2.6 billion dollars to elect Obama in 2012. All of these figures are in 2012 dollars. This means that the highly professional ‘brain washing’ is not only intense, but goes on forever, at least two years of campaigning with dozens of debates and millions of TV ads, almost all of which are purposely distorted to prey on the emotional aspect of human nature.
If all of the above is not bad enough, many of the issues today are so complicated and technical that almost all voters are in over their heads, unable to properly assess many issues. Trade issues, climate issues, environmental protection issues, tax issues, work related issues, foreign policy issues, economic issues of all sorts, and so on, require an expertise that hardly any of us, or Congressmen possess on most of these issues. Thus, we are asking people to vote on issues which they have no personal knowledge base to lean on. Most people can’t even come up with the name of a Vice President or where most countries are on a map—and that is not a criticism of them at all. Their interests are elsewhere, and they may be a perfect citizen. More and more people are busy, very busy, with their social life via internet gadgets. For some it is with a handful of people day after day, hour after hour, and for others it is with hundreds of people in very superficial ways. And little of it is about any substantive topics that would ever help them cast intelligent votes in an election. We are lucky if even half the people eligible to vote do so. When a third of those eligible to vote actually vote and it is a close election, that means the winner is elected with about 17% of the eligible voters. Democracy? I think not.
Today’s elections are less enlightening than they are grotesquely expensive and slick manipulation of our emotional state regarding ‘hot button’ issues. If one is against gun control than that is the issue which will drive your vote. If one is against gay marriage then that is the issue which will drive your vote. And so it goes, issues which are least important for the future become the issues which determine how many of us vote. On the issues which are really important for the future most of us couldn’t talk for 5 minutes on such topics. Especially today, most people have very little down time in which they must create their own thoughts and think about ‘deep’ subjects. There is more stress in most people’s lives today, rich or poor, than 70 years ago. Even though we suffer information overload, or maybe better stated amusement overload, we are busy surviving from day to day, and have no time or inclination to give any strenuous thought to any ‘deep’ ‘esoteric’ issues.
In the past it was mostly a question of which independent country would do the most right things and advance as a civilization. Today, the most important issues are global. And therein lies a big problem. The far reaching problems can no longer be solved by individual countries. For example, without global minimum wages how can the wages of workers across the globe ever rise to ensure all workers get a living wage? How can responsible human reproduction ever be achieved to reduce overpopulation without serious global enforcement? How can the environment, including climate, be protected without global cooperation? And these kind of questions can go on and on. Our communities today are those with whom we contact via the internet. Local, state, and even national communities are not real to us anymore compared to yesteryears.
Thus, the real question in terms of government these days is really what kind of global governance can be achieved to attack all these problems which are now global, not nation problems. The answer, right now, is blowing in the wind. Times are a changin’ and serious problems for humanity and all species/natural resources are bearing down on us with huge potential repercussions. Throughout the billions of years evolutionary progress, nothing like the present has ever existed. All bets are off, but Mother Nature bats last and yet another major correctional phase seems inevitable. These evolutionary correctional phases can last hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years before progress commences again. And so far, progress always eventually regains control albeit often with a new cast of species to advance the process.
If democracy is failing and becoming incapable of solving major global problems, what is the alternative? Maybe down the road some alternative might be envisioned, but right now neither the shadow or George Gobel’s ‘little birdie’ knows, let alone any of us. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.
