Government By The People
The thing about the USAmerican left that causes me the greatest frustration is our absolute inability to understand that politicians are our employees, not our leaders. That if the current crop of Democrats in government are the most craven, cowardly, useless, unthinking set of people it is possible to imagine, this situation is a direct reflection of ourselves. Isn’t that, in fact, the meaning of the phrase “government by the people”?
I mean, Republicans (minus MAGA) understand this, how is it so enduringly out of our reach? They know to loathe their politicians and yet have them advance their agendas. Pols are not our saviours. They are not better than you and me. They are people and they respond to the same incentives as other people. The kind of strength it takes to demonstrate integrity when all incentives face directly away is immense. Sure, a real leader who demonstrates that kind of strength comes along occasionally, but we have ~350 representatives in government. Does progress really have to stall if the vast majority of them are only ordinary people?
Let’s consider the lifecycle of a typical Dem rep. Let’s start small, a State’s House, maybe; a moderate voter body. You start off with an ideal (maybe even two!): perhaps it’s to fix homelessness, or education funding, or allow Black people to live their lives. So you stand for election.
Nobody else turns up for the Dem primary and you’re on to the general. You realise that most people you think are on the same wavelength aren’t … at least, not so precisely that their votes are slam-dunks. Perhaps their priorities are slightly different: they want universal healthcare over housing. Or they’re cynical about the ability of one state rep to do anything positive, so they don’t vote at all. Meanwhile, your Republican opponent is freely spending corporate cash to spread a message of hate and polling way better than you. You find your options are: keep your integrity and lose, or take corporate money for a chance to put roofs over heads.
Now, let’s say, in a scenario that doesn’t happen 99 times out of a 100, you reach your people, keep your integrity, and win. (Remember this is the best-case scenario. You are far more likely to stumble right here.) You’re a State Rep now, and find that your day is made up of two kinds of decisions:
Should I spend time on my pet issue or one of the thousands other, more immediate ones that come with governance?
And, unbelievably, instance upon instance of ‘should I keep my integrity and lose, or discard it and get people housing?’, each instance of which has a 1% chance of the best-case scenario (integrity + housing) happening. By the end of just three such decisions, the chance of the best-case scenario is down to 0.0001%, a one-in-million chance.
Imagine, instead, a slightly different scenario. The tough fight is in the primary. You win it, the progressive voter body turns out en masse, no matter how much your Republican opponent spends, and the general is a shoo-in. The primary is conducted with integrity at the forefront. You simply have to present yourself honestly and trust the Dem voter body to do its thing. Even if you lose, whoever won holds an ideal that is closer to the community’s needs at the time, and you’ll be happy to endorse them for the general.
So, clearly, all we must do to create this utopia is to be involved in every election at every level, in addition, of course, to making rent, putting food on the table, shoeing our children, and getting a bit of rest here and there. I don’t have to tell you that very few people have the capacity for this.
So does that leave us waiting for magical, superheroic leaders and letting progress stall (or, let’s be honest, regress) in the meantime?
Or will we have to accept sadness and disappointment, just showing up whenever we can and voting the best we can, knowing we’ll never reach the utopia of our dreams?
Bad news and good: the second option may be the only way forward, but maybe its sadness and disappointment isn’t inherent.
What if we’ve been looking at the uncomplicated lives of traditionally privileged demographic groups and thinking, “I want that,” without realising that said effortless privilege is the result of being raised above (and at the expense of) everyone else? What if we’re falling prey to the fallacy that doing good should feel good (or at least not as unpleasant as voting for terrible people just because the other alternatives are worse)? What if we let go of those expectations? Can we think of choosing the best out of bad alternatives as a positive, joyful thing? Can we remember that, for the vast majority of human history, people did not have even this odious choice?
So let’s vote today, and let’s hope for a blue tsunami, but unless we want to find ourselves back here in a few years’ time, let’s not stop there. Let’s keep showing up, keep voting for the least evil, and remember how easy it is to lose that right. One single vote may not be the great power we all wish for, but it is not insignificant, and it is not only great power that comes with great responsibility.
This is a democracy. If our government is to change, we need to change.