Friday, November 17, 2017

From democracy to oligarchy

I don't want to talk about Roy Moore, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or Al Franken.

I want to offer up a possible reason as to why so many times when we go in to vote, we feel like we're having to make rationalizations, or deal in situational ethics, or choosing between the lesser of two evils, or telling ourselves we're not voting "for" someone as much as we're voting ''against" the other candidate.

I have written before about voting. I have written - tongue in cheek - about how I like it when people don't vote, because the fewer people that vote, the more they make my vote count.

And that's true, but I honestly I wish more people would vote.

Here in my home state of Alabama, we have gone through a series of special elections, of which we're not finished. We had a primary to choose Republican and Democratic candidates for Senate. Then we had a run-off to determine a Republican candidate. And soon - as you may have heard - some of us will go to the polls to make a final vote on who we want to represent us in the U.S. Senate.

I say "final,'' although it may not really be final. If Roy Moore wins, there is all kinds of talk about the Senate not seating him (which I don't believe, Constitutionally, they can do; go back and look at the Court ruling when the House tried to not seat Adam Clayton Powell in 1967), or once he's in office begin an immediate process of possibly expelling him (which will take a two-thirds vote, and it is one of those things where everyone in the Senate better take a long, hard look at themselves before they go down the road of expelling someone for what they may or may not have done 30-40 years ago).

Even if Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate, wins, this seat will be up for election again in 2020, because this vote is just to finish former Sen. Jeff Sessions' term which was set to expire in 2020. And regardless of who wins, I'll be shocked if there are not a whole bunch of people lined up to run for this office in 2020, and even more shocked if whoever is the incumbent holds on to the seat.

Let me also say, as someone who has made Alabama my home, this election is not a referendum on Donald Trump or anything else of national mood. This has become simply a race where people in Alabama, one of the most red of red states, feel they have had outside influences trying to determine the outcome of this election from the state. To show the state of the Democratic party in this state, if you add up all the votes cast in the Democratic primary, they still wouldn't have beaten the top vote-getter in the Republican primary, Roy Moore. And my guess is that many people who voted for Roy Moore - although he does have a considerable base - did so in the run-off because they didn't like the Washington DC-based campaign that was run on behalf of Luther Strange, who was appointed by former Gov. Robert Bentley to fill Sessions' term before Bentley was forced to resign ... well, it gets complicated.

Needless to say, we've had a rather bizarre run of political intrigue here in Alabama over the last two years, with the Speaker of the House resigning after being indicted, the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court (Moore) being basically forced out of office (suspended, actually, but in reality forced out), the Governor appointing the then- Attorney General to the Senate in a move that many people feel was a quid-pro-quo in an attempt to end the investigation into the Governors' behavior, only to have the Governor forced to resign anyway and the new Governor ordering a special election to fill the Senate seat, which brings us to where we are now.

That was a very short, very edited version of politics in the great state of Alabama over the last few years.

Which brings me to my point:

In the 2017 primary featuring both parties, only 18 percent of eligible voters turned out to vote. In the Republican run-off, only 14 percent of eligible voters showed up to participate in the most basic and most important part of our system of government.

Which means, at least in the Republican run-off, about 8 percent of the voting population decided that Roy Moore would be the candidate representing the Republican party.

That, to me, is an oligarchy.

Not the traditional oligarchy where a small group of military leaders, or business people, or party elites run things.

But the first definition of "oligarchy" that popped up on my google search reads: "a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution."

I'd say 8 percent of the voting population deciding who the candidates are is an oligarchy.

When you don't participate in the process, you get what others decide they want for you.

When only 8 percent of the population makes that decision - or even just 14 percent, or 18 percent - what you get are the truly hardcore and committed who may not reflect the belief and values of the great "silent" majority - determining who our leaders are.

Which is why the tragedy of a democracy, even a democratic republic like we have, is that it usually ends by suicide. People quit participating, and the process dies or becomes a, well, an oligarchy.

I have heard it argued that we really don't want the 'great unwashed' voting, the people who don't follow the intricacies of politics and policy and the repercussions of actions beyond the initial, most immediate result.

(By that, I mean as simple as while you may not have liked Donald Trump as a person, you knew that whoever won the last presidential election was going to nominate at least one Supreme Court justice, but maybe didn't realize there were also roughly 125 Federal judgeships to be appointed. That is a massive influence over the way the judicial branch will operate over the next decade or more. And that is just one example of most of us not being aware of the ripple effect of politics, how there are very few decisions made in a vacuum that don't have repercussions that could be more dramatic than even the initial decision).

Yes, the great masses get fooled by 'fake news.' The core of the whole "Russian influence" issue is that people allowed themselves to believe "news" posts (and social media posts) that reinforced their own biases and fears. Hey, that's what advertising and bumper stickers and tweets and campaign slogans are all about; what we're really saying is, we don't want our voters fooled by the fake news of other countries, only our own.

But I'd still rather be ruled by the many than by the few.

The more people who participate, the better off we'll ultimately be. You know what? I don't care if you actively participate in one party or another. I'd prefer you did, but more than that, I just wish people would vote. I have found it's amazing to get that ballot, look at all the names on the list of people who may decide my future and the future of my children, and realize I wish I had done a little more research into each of them than I did.

Then I vote anyway. But every time, I have come away determined to do it better next time.

And that's all we can ask.

Maybe it won't improve the quality of candidates we seem to be faced with in every election; maybe it will even get worse.

But at least it will more of us making that decision, and not just the 8 percent.

If you don't vote, my vote counts for more. And I don't really want to be in the oligarchy of American government.

We do have the power to change things - through voting. All of our opinions matter. But if you don't vote, then it may not be long before our individual opinions no longer matter.

And if that happens, we all lose.

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