perfidy

Yesterday, Mrs. Buckethead and I went into town to register to vote.  And, as is the case whenever we both leave the house, our passel of youngins came with us.  My oldest, Sir John-my-cup-runneth-over-with-questions, wanted to know what was up.

John: What are we doing?

Me: Registering to vote.

John: Why are registering to vote? 

Me: So we can vote.

John: Can I vote?

Me: No.

John: Why can't I vote.

Me: Because I said so.

[wife hits me in arm]

Me: And because you're not old enough.

John: So you and mommie will vote?

Me: Yes.

John: What is voting?

Me: A magical process whereby criminals become annointed by God.

[wife gives me evil eye.]

John: Dad, are you joking me?

Me: Strangely enough, no.

Happily, we got to the voter registration office before that conversation deteriorated any further.  My response was off the cuff cynicism, which should surprise no one who knows me.  But pondering it further as we drove to the courthouse (John: why are we going to the courthouse? Me: To pay mommie's ticket.  John: what's a ticket? Me: A means by which the government extorts money from the innocent.  John: So the government is going to pay us money?  Me: Not in this lifetime.) it occurred to me that my earlier comment was exactly true, if in a larger sense uninformative.

Why do we feel that divine and inestimable principle, DEMOCRACY, is of such great value?  If 50% + 1 of the population of eligible voters who have bothered to register to vote and make the additional effort to actually, you know, vote, agree on anything, then that thing is not merely agreed to.  It gets more than that.  That thing is divinely sanctioned, and it becomes heresy to argue the result.  Even if it results in something like Hezbollah getting control of the Palestinian government.  Or only slightly less bad, some egregious asshat like, say, any president over the last century or their opponents getting to be leader of the free world.

It has been said, most famously by Winston Churchill, that democracy is the worst system of government devised by man, except for all the others.  We're measuring our system of government on the bad scale, which can't be a good thing.  "Jesus this sucks, but at least we don't live in a Islamic theocracy." 

"Jesus!" we might also say, "this generic spam from the black striped can tastes like ass, but at least we're not eating dog food."

Shouldn't we be thinking about inventing some fine French cuisine, or at least McDonalds?

I think that there is a fundamental disconnect between our notion of freedom and liberty, and the notion of democracy.  Or more to the point, I don't think we mean what we think we mean when we say these words.  We conflate the idea of living in a democracy with living free, with liberty.  The one must naturally lead to the other.  But does being able to select, with a few of your buddies, the town second assistant dogcatcher make you free?  Or the president?

I've commented on this blog, long ago, that I think one of the true wonders of life in America is that so few things are really political, and almost none that matter.  We have removed so many things from the political sphere, and this is good.  Where you live, whether you live; where you work or whether you work are not questions of politics.  Did I support the right candidate?  Oh, shit, the Democrats took power and now I won't be able to get work cause the registered Democratic plumbers will get all the jobs.  Oh, the humanity!

Or, oh shit, the Republicans are in charge, and it's the reeducation camps for all the performance artists, gender studies professors and community organizers. 

Hey, not a bad idea...

Anyway, that's not how it works here, thank god.  Nor does it work that way for most anything.  Politics does not effect most of what we do, except at the edges.  Which is not to say that the government doesn't have a huge effect on our daily lives - but politics, partisanship, that polite and largely gunless civil war, does not.  We should cherish this.  And to extent we do, every time we decry "partisanship" and "the politics of personal destruction" and the like.  We have a sense that that sort of thing is squalid, furtive, and somehow... dirty.  And we feel that way for the very simple reason that it is.  Politics is a zero sum game, and for you to win, I must lose.

So why do we feel that our quadrennial reality show makes us free?  The federal and state bureaucracies are not accountable to our elected officials, let alone ourselves.  Hell, governors and presidents can't even fire people, the way any CEO can.  The civil service is responsible for writing the tens of thousands of pages long federal register, that has only a passing resemblance to the laws passed by Congress, and is itself responsible for enforcing them, and can be fully as selective as it likes.  Just ask Martha Stewart. If we stopped choosing, how would our lives change?

In this country, I can live where I want, work where I want, talk to whomever I choose, write what I want, marry any woman who will put up with my shit, with a level of freedom that compares favorably with the Soviet Union if not the America of a hundred years ago.  I can be somebody!  I can do what I want, so long as I don't run afoul of any line from the five hundred pound federal register, in which case I have paramilitary law enforcement officers doing a no-knock entry on my house and shooting my dog.

They always shoot the dog.

If I build a treehouse and fail to file a environmental impact statement, or pay $500 for a building permit, or or hire a union electrician, or ...

And god forbid that I smuggle nail clippers onto a plane, or joke about bombs in front of a TSA agent.

Voting for Obama or McCain will not improve my life.  The only question is whether one of them might be able to make it worse, which is the only significant power remaining to the Presidency in the 21st Century.

Why do we think that voting makes us free?