Complacent Victims

photo from Sandbox News

An extremely contentious and unusually competitive presidential primary season has opened up discussions about quite a few aspects of the American political process that many find frustrating.  Before he emerged as unquestionable Republican nominee, many of Trump's supporters were outraged at the prospect that he might walk into the convention with the most delegates and be denied the Republican candidacy by the party leadership through a contested convention.  Similarly, Sanders fans have lobbed numerous accusations at various pieces of the Democrats' primary process that they believe are being leveraged to put their man at a disadvantage (for instance, that for technical reasons he may be left off the ballot in Washington D.C.).

Full disclosure: Bernie Sanders is my candidate of choice.   Now that the cat's out of the bag, I'll add that I think such frustrations are totally reasonable.  Many (particularly those who'd rather see Hillary or one of the "establishment" Republicans that have since fallen by the wayside sitting in the Oval Office) dismiss such concerns as tantrums thrown by people playing a game to which we all know the rules.  We should accept, they say, the real world as it is, and not waste our energy on complaining about things we can't change.

I just can't get on border with that kind of lifeless fatalism, largely because I think its a tool deployed by people vested in the Status Quo.  The powers that be have the most to lose from a conversation about changing the world, and the more we allow ourselves to be convinced that things will always be the way they are right now, the more sure that prospect becomes.  With that in mind, I'd like to point out a few obvious truths for the Internet's humble consideration.

1. Being a Democrat or a Republican is not a constitutional requirement for being the President

All of the angst, all of the controversy, all of the gamesmanship and politicking around the nominating processes for the country's two major political parties exists only because it is accepted as an unassailable truth that President will be a candidate nominated by one of these two parties.  Political reality that may be, but only because we, the voters, have surrendered this power to the Dems and the GOP.  For whatever mind-boggling reason (probably because we assume that only a Democrat or Republican can win, and therefore those are the candidates that we must vote for... thus the self-fulfilling prophecy continues), the overwhelming numbers of voters will only cast their ballots for members of one of these two parties.  This is our fault.  Think that the way the party elites design the rules isn't fair?  You're probably right, but no one's making you vote for members of their party.  We, as an electorate, have essentially ceded the power to determine our leaders to these two gangs whose members life experiences have a lot more in common with each other than with most of us that will be casting ballots.

Don't like super-delegates? Don't like party affiliation rules?  Don't like arcane procedures for assigning delegates based on percentage thresholds and geographical vote distribution?  These things, each of them designed to restrict the ability of the general public to freely elect their leaders, they exist only because we all freely choose to keep voting for the same goons that put these structures in place.

2. All the people that DON'T VOTE every year could have decided every presidential election. Ever.

A resounding victory in an American presidential election means between your opponent 60%-40%.  Most presidential elections are decided by a difference of less than ten percentage points.  That fact is astounding when one considers that strong voter turnout for a presidential election in American is sixty percent.  That's not of the general population - that's a fraction of eligible voters.  Barely more than half of people that have the opportunity to officially voice their opinions about our country's leadership bother to do so.  No wonder they think they can get away with nearly anything - because no matter how frustrated we are with the state of American politics, many of us will do absolutely nothing about it.

Some of you may be grumbling about various barriers to voting that exist.  Some of you may be recalling stories about the Arizona democratic primaries, where people were waiting in line until Midnight to vote.  Once again, you're right.  Our leaders have put roadblocks in the way to try to discourage people from participating in governance, because frankly they'd rather you didn't bother.  And the problem is that we're not outraged.  We should be prepared to pull down any leader that tries to take power away from the people, but most of us are too excited to try to earn marginal advantages for our own political factions instead of having any respect for the democratic process.

3. Seriously, your leaders are afraid of you, and they will do things to try to pacify and disenfranchise you.

It's not a dark secret - it's been part of the discussion of American political process since its inception.  That was the primary motivation for the inclusion of the Electoral College in presidential elections.  The problem was so openly discussed by Founding Fathers like Madison and Hamilton that observer of early American politics Alexis de Tocqueville gave it it's own snazzy name: "The Tyranny of the Majority".  The rich, educated guys that made the rules (and still do) didn't trust the average person's judgement.  They built mechanisms into our elections that allowed them to present the elegant facade of democracy while still preserving the safety of oligarchic dominance.

America (and the rest of the world) will only ever be as free as we demand it be.  If these simple facts make you angry, my recommendation is straightforward - start giving a shit about democracy and elections.  Not just the candidates.  Care about the process, even if it means your team might be more likely to lose.