![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quarrelBack when I had my CCG job, I went on a few trips around the country to be an official presence at various regional tournaments. One of these put me in, oh, I think it was Virginia or thereabouts. All I really remember is that it was a small science fiction and gaming convention somewhere on the mid-eastern seaboard with a strong Conservative pro-military bias. It was 2003.
At this convention, I met a person who needed a cane to walk. He needed a cane because he'd been shot in the leg serving in the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq. He'd need it for the rest of his life. This person, as you might expect, had some strong political opinions.
He believed that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, because he had been there and seen them, as well as heard reports from other troops. He believed that there was exactly one reason that the news — or, in fact, anyone — would deny the existence of WMDs, and that is simply that the media are members of a different political party than President Bush was, and they were therefore trying to remove him from power and replace him with someone from their own side. Contradicting anything the President said, regardless of truth, was part of that plan. I really wish I'd been quick enough to point out I'd heard even the CIA say the evidence was somewhere between shaky and fabricated, but alas, I'm simply not mentally adroit.
He also believed that John Kerry was a traitor and should be in jail, not on the ballot as a potential next President. Kerry advocated more multinational cooperation in foreign affairs and more adherence to things like U.N. mandates and international law — stances this veteran argued are in direct contradiction with the Presidential Oath of Office. After all, you cannot legitimately claim you'll "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" or the U.S. itself if you're planning to make it subservient to the will of a foreign committee, can you? Plus, Kerry's picture was apparently on a wall in North Vietnam's capital with a note formally thanking him and anti-war protesters like him for weakening America's fighting resolve and letting North Vietnam win the Vietnam War.
Here's my pickle: if the world were fair, this person would have the right to vote and I would not. He suffered permanent disability in service to his country. He nearly made the ultimate sacrifice, and only a combination of injury and family responsibilities prevented him from volunteering for another tour and shipping out again once the bandages came off. He's earned a say in how this ship steers. In contrast, what the hell have I done for America? I pay taxes, I've been on jury duty twice... and that's it. I just can't see how that little is enough.
And yet, he's wrong on so many of his points. Snopes.com actually debunks the Vietnam Kerry photo as largely urban legend. More WMD exaggerations have been shown as well, by U.S. departments that are anything but Liberal. So while I may or may not actually deserve my right to vote, he's shown himself to be bad at voting.
But he probably wouldn't have believed the Snopes counterevidence if I'd supplied it to him on that one day. After all, it wasn't proof. Anyone can say anything on the internet. And no way in hell was I going to convince him he hadn't seen what he thought he saw in person on the ground in Iraq itself, not even if I were the King of Siam.
Which brings me to the present day.
I came across a quote recently that's purportedly by Lincoln: "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer." Beer spurred the quote originally, but I'm focusing on truth now.
People aren't "given" truth, Abe. They're given twisted half-versions of it by every different side. This is nothing new in general — I think — but it's new to me as I try to learn politics, and it's infuriating. Global warming? I think it's real, but damn if I can prove it. I can't even summarize why I believe it. Not one reference, not one single news report or research paper. The recession? Why am I obliged to vote on who's going to fix it when I can't reasonably be expected to deduce what caused it? ("It was greedy bankers taking too many risks without oversight." "It was Liberal laws that forced banks to give loans to poor people so they could buy houses as easily as rich people." "It was deliberately triggered by banks because they knew they'd get bailed out and end up in better financial shape than when the economy was good, just like happened in the Great Depression.")
And even when we're given the facts straight up, we no longer know what to do with them. Two hundred-odd years of past precedent has seen to that. Look at the health care bill. I won't even go into whether the general idea behind it is good or bad. I don't have the education or the real-life experience to merit an informed stance on that issue. No, I'm still stuck on the question of whether one particular detail — the federal government fining people who can afford health insurance but don't buy it — is constitutional. By my reading of the Constitution, it's clearly spelled out in non-legalese English that Washington can't do that (although individual states can), and the reasons I've discovered as to why the courts are okay with it are convoluted and unintuitive. One is that fines count as taxes since they result in the government gaining money, and the federal government can explicitly tax people "to provide for the...general Welfare". Another is that requiring people to buy something from a multi-state agency like an insurance company counts as regulating interstate commerce, which is something else Washington is expressly permitted to do.
I would not have come up with either of these explanations on my own. I don't know how anyone could without an extensive legal background. And yet that describes the vast majority of people given voting power in this country.
So...how the hell are people supposed to vote on anything?
At this convention, I met a person who needed a cane to walk. He needed a cane because he'd been shot in the leg serving in the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq. He'd need it for the rest of his life. This person, as you might expect, had some strong political opinions.
He believed that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, because he had been there and seen them, as well as heard reports from other troops. He believed that there was exactly one reason that the news — or, in fact, anyone — would deny the existence of WMDs, and that is simply that the media are members of a different political party than President Bush was, and they were therefore trying to remove him from power and replace him with someone from their own side. Contradicting anything the President said, regardless of truth, was part of that plan. I really wish I'd been quick enough to point out I'd heard even the CIA say the evidence was somewhere between shaky and fabricated, but alas, I'm simply not mentally adroit.
He also believed that John Kerry was a traitor and should be in jail, not on the ballot as a potential next President. Kerry advocated more multinational cooperation in foreign affairs and more adherence to things like U.N. mandates and international law — stances this veteran argued are in direct contradiction with the Presidential Oath of Office. After all, you cannot legitimately claim you'll "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" or the U.S. itself if you're planning to make it subservient to the will of a foreign committee, can you? Plus, Kerry's picture was apparently on a wall in North Vietnam's capital with a note formally thanking him and anti-war protesters like him for weakening America's fighting resolve and letting North Vietnam win the Vietnam War.
Here's my pickle: if the world were fair, this person would have the right to vote and I would not. He suffered permanent disability in service to his country. He nearly made the ultimate sacrifice, and only a combination of injury and family responsibilities prevented him from volunteering for another tour and shipping out again once the bandages came off. He's earned a say in how this ship steers. In contrast, what the hell have I done for America? I pay taxes, I've been on jury duty twice... and that's it. I just can't see how that little is enough.
And yet, he's wrong on so many of his points. Snopes.com actually debunks the Vietnam Kerry photo as largely urban legend. More WMD exaggerations have been shown as well, by U.S. departments that are anything but Liberal. So while I may or may not actually deserve my right to vote, he's shown himself to be bad at voting.
But he probably wouldn't have believed the Snopes counterevidence if I'd supplied it to him on that one day. After all, it wasn't proof. Anyone can say anything on the internet. And no way in hell was I going to convince him he hadn't seen what he thought he saw in person on the ground in Iraq itself, not even if I were the King of Siam.
Which brings me to the present day.
I came across a quote recently that's purportedly by Lincoln: "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer." Beer spurred the quote originally, but I'm focusing on truth now.
People aren't "given" truth, Abe. They're given twisted half-versions of it by every different side. This is nothing new in general — I think — but it's new to me as I try to learn politics, and it's infuriating. Global warming? I think it's real, but damn if I can prove it. I can't even summarize why I believe it. Not one reference, not one single news report or research paper. The recession? Why am I obliged to vote on who's going to fix it when I can't reasonably be expected to deduce what caused it? ("It was greedy bankers taking too many risks without oversight." "It was Liberal laws that forced banks to give loans to poor people so they could buy houses as easily as rich people." "It was deliberately triggered by banks because they knew they'd get bailed out and end up in better financial shape than when the economy was good, just like happened in the Great Depression.")
And even when we're given the facts straight up, we no longer know what to do with them. Two hundred-odd years of past precedent has seen to that. Look at the health care bill. I won't even go into whether the general idea behind it is good or bad. I don't have the education or the real-life experience to merit an informed stance on that issue. No, I'm still stuck on the question of whether one particular detail — the federal government fining people who can afford health insurance but don't buy it — is constitutional. By my reading of the Constitution, it's clearly spelled out in non-legalese English that Washington can't do that (although individual states can), and the reasons I've discovered as to why the courts are okay with it are convoluted and unintuitive. One is that fines count as taxes since they result in the government gaining money, and the federal government can explicitly tax people "to provide for the...general Welfare". Another is that requiring people to buy something from a multi-state agency like an insurance company counts as regulating interstate commerce, which is something else Washington is expressly permitted to do.
I would not have come up with either of these explanations on my own. I don't know how anyone could without an extensive legal background. And yet that describes the vast majority of people given voting power in this country.
So...how the hell are people supposed to vote on anything?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-12 09:29 pm (UTC)And also a very depressed person most of the time. :/
(a person randomly reading your blog because you have indie games listed as an interest)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-13 02:34 am (UTC)Now, it's not necessarily lock-step; I ask why she prefers a particular candidate over another and she answers, and I consider whether that makes sense to me and is in line with my goals, and if not, we discuss it. I can vote differently from her. But in general, we have the same idea about what our government should be, and I know that I can count on her expertise far above my own.
In return, she comes to me about matters within my area of expertise... but it's rare that she really needs all that much help with fonts, music, or the Mega Man series of videogames. *grin*
So that's how the hell I vote. I basically ask someone who knows what she's doing, and I follow along.
The Dream of Meritocracy
Date: 2010-05-13 05:35 pm (UTC)I don't believe in democracy. I think democracy gives people exactly the government they deserve, which utterly horrifies me.
People understand the idea of meritocracy. Ask somebody to take a vote on their medical care among a few doctors and a bunch of people who've watched House, and you'll probably get them giving you the finger and asking the doctors. They let the doctors vote, but they would exclude the people without training in the field in which the vote is relevant.
Why is governing any different? What in the nature of democracy makes it inherently better than the alternatives? Well, sure, it eliminates the threat of tyranny... supposedly. It replaces it with the threat of mob rule.
Of course, the process of identifying an expert is itself a challenge, but really, I think that's a far-more-easily surmountable one than restoring the kind of political competence that the white male landowners had when this whole "let the people decide" idea became popular.
Re: The Dream of Meritocracy
Date: 2010-05-21 10:12 am (UTC)As I see it, the main goal of the USA's democratic system is not electing the most-qualified candidate. It's making sure everyone who'll be affected by an issue has some amount of input, even if indirect, on how it's handled. You know, to avoid another "taxation without representation" incident. Naturally this means the best person for a position won't always be elected. I understand and respect the intent, though. This isn't an ideal world. There is no good way of objectively determining who deserves a say in how things work and who doesn't.
I don't even think democracy is necessarily mob rule, but of course avoiding that requires that every voter have basic political competence and that the law isn't obfuscated. Neither of those holds true anymore. It's mostly the latter than I'm bemoaning here. I'd like to think I can handle the former on my own at the personal level, but it seems pointless if I don't have both.
Re: The Dream of Meritocracy
Date: 2010-05-21 04:20 pm (UTC)1) People who lack competency in any field tend to dramatically overestimate their abilities.
2) Voting is portrayed as a right, not a responsibility.
The first... can only really be fixed with examinations and certification, but I suspect we're past the point at which we can even agree upon what should be on such a test and what the right answers should be. I believe that, as a populace, the American people have become too divided to agree on how to proceed, and that dissolution is inevitable as competing visions of America's future further polarize the electorate.
The second isn't something that I think can be fixed, because of the way we elevate democracy to its own religion. We've largely eliminated the ability to test for competency because of past abuses to keep "undesirables" from the polls, without recognizing that the government form itself requires some degree of political awareness.
Of course, there are other problems. I think that the two-party system is horribly broken, the winner-take-all encourages mediocrity and generic candidates seeking to appeal to a broad range of contradictory positions, the moneyed interest in politics interfere with the value of voting, and the disparity of voting machines and techniques across the country prevent uniformity of result.
End result: we don't have a democracy we can trust, and we don't have a democracy we can fix, because the people responsible for fixing it can't afford to listen.