Thoughts on the 2010 Elections

I will confess that the outcome of the 2010 elections is not wholly what I had desired.  This will likely elicit cries from the audience that I am a closet liberal, but I assure you that this could not be further from the truth.  My political philosophy is far more nuanced and does not lend itself to being shoehorned into neat ideological categories.  Despite this, I will gladly take the results, because I am hoping that it means we will have a period of legislative gridlock during which nothing gets accomplished.  I mean this not in the traditional sense; not much good gets accomplished when one party has control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.  Instead, I mean this in the sense that I hope that little legislation detrimental to our nation gets accomplished.  In other words, I wish for a “do nothing” Congress that, by default, stymies everything that the president wishes to do. 

This is contrary to what I’ve written in the past, belittling Congress for doing nothing, with members working too little, and mostly just collecting a paycheck while waxing ecstatic about their own individual grandeur.  I still advocate a strong, competent legislature, but the operative word is “competent.”  What we have witnessed in the past 100 years does not evoke confidence in the legislature, which is mostly a tool of the executive.  Or perhaps the executive is a tool of the legislature, as the latter body has effectively delegated much of its responsibility to the former.  But I digress.

In 2006 I hoped for a Democratic victory, as I did in 2008, both of which I've also written about.  I wanted all of these idealistic liberals and hopeful independents to have their hopes and dreams crushed.  They were simply trading one set of incompetents for another.  I suspect that many of them see that now, and I suspect that many more simply refuse to believe it.  But the seed of thought has surely been planted.    

The period of time after the 2006 elections, and more so after those that took place in 2008, has shown me and hopefully others the dangers of giving one party too much power.  Democrats believed that the sweeping victories in those two elections gave them “a mandate” to push through various legislative agendas.  It didn’t, but more on that momentarily.

I have also come to more firmly believe that we are in need of a strong third party to offset the slavish devotion to ideology the “Big Two” possess.  It seems, on the surface, that we are simply swinging from one extreme to the other; each victory by one party being seen as a triumph of that party’s ideological underpinnings.

John Boehner, the presumptive Speaker of the House, said last night that change starts now.  I cannot help but to stifle a yawn and a snore.  I vaguely recall that I’ve heard such talk before.  Despite his proclamation, which I suppose is merely his effort to win graciously, you will likely see the GOP attempt to rectify the “grievances” that Democrats have issued to them these past four years.  Nothing will change.  Washington will not, contrary to Boehner’s rhetorical musings, begin doing what’s best for the American people.  Boehner’s party is in charge, just as it was four short years ago.  They say that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  If that’s true, then Americans are collectively insane. 

The sense of supreme validation this election gave to the idolaters, those who raise a fist in victory and say, “We Won!” is scary.  I can’t help but ask, “Who won, and what did they win?”  Did Americans win, or did the GOP win?  Is the latter good for the former?  And what did they win?  Power?  If the answer to that question is yes, then we should be scared, indeed. 

This is all the more frightening when one subscribes to the oft-mentioned notion that Americans have some manner of collective wisdom in elections.  Consider all the hoopla that is made just prior to Election Day about how effective the massive amounts of money spent on ads and campaigning are at swaying the electorate.  How things change the day after, nay?  Now the virtues of the collective wisdom of party-line voters, uninformed voters, and plain apathetic voters is extolled to no end.  Further, the winners wrongly interpret this collective wisdom, and see it, again, as legitimizing their personal ideology, which means they are less than likely to compromise.  Vae Victus, indeed.  In this case, however, they fail to see the reality. 

If Americans do have a collective wisdom, it does not lean in favor of one ideology over another.  This election was not a referendum against Democrats or Obama, nor is it an outspoken desire to see a conservative agenda pushed through by a newly empowered GOP.  This election, like those of 2006 and 2008, is a referendum against the ineptitude of our government as a whole.

What to Eat? - A Political Metaphor

You walk into the only restaurant in the county.  You're famished.  You haven't eaten in what seems like days.  You sit down, and open the menu.  It's printed on high-quality paper, and there's all sorts of fancy decoration.  The table's are really nice too.  And the wait staff is top notch.  In other words, the presentation is impeccable.

However, your menu choices are:

A.) Tuna melt and fries.
B.) Grilled Cheese and fries.

You're really, really hungry, so you order the tuna melt.  It's terrible.  You can barely stomach it.  The mayo is rotten and the tuna tastes like something caught in a Thai toilet.  Worse, the fries consist of potato chips left out in the kitchen for three days.  And it cost you twenty of your hard earned dollars. The fine print on the menu says, "No Refund."

So, you figure, what the hell, I'm still hungry, so let's try the grilled cheese.  No one can screw that up.  Oh, and it comes.  It looks delicious.  The wait staff guarantees that it is the best sandwich ever, and that it will completely eradicate the taste of rancid tuna left over from the first order.  All of this, for the low price of $30.

You dig in and are immediately let down.  It too, is terrible.  The cheese is, strangely, not melted and slightly moldy.  It's certainly not what was advertised.

So what do you do?  It's the only restaurant in the county.  You go back a couple of times, trying both items on the menu, and they never get better.

Let me ask you: Would you keep going back to this restaurant?  No, I'm guessing that you would not.  At least not until they got a third item on the menu for you to try.  Instead, you'd either stop eating out, or drive to the next county.

Our current political system is this restaurant.  You have two choices, and both of them taste like the inside of a dead deer's ass.  Why do you keep going back to eat it?

In 2008, I did not vote in the presidential election.  It was my own little way of protesting this system.  Why would I eat a steaming pile of shit given to me on a silver platter and then smile all the way to the cash register, because, well, I gotta eat, right?  I wouldn't.  I was presented with two equally repulsive candidates.  And before you tell me that I should simply vote for the "lesser of two evils," I say, no.  I shan't do that under any circumstances.  That offends me.  If we can sit here and rationalize all the ill in our nation because, despite that ill, "this is still the freest/best country on earth" can we at least not pretend that the empty-headed nimrods that are presented to us as presidential candidates every four years are the best people our nation has to offer?  Please?  Pretty please with sugar on top?  Because they're not, people.  Yes, this country may very well be the freest/best nation on earth, but that doesn't mean that because of this we should sit back and relax and let these colossal douche bags beat it to death with huge steel dildos.  (Yeah, I'm a lot more lewd than normal; I'm fucking pissed.  When I submit this for publication, I'll be sure to make it teen friendly.)  Being good is no excuse.  Do you know what happens when you fail to maintain "the best?"  It because the "used to be the best, but is now just sort of okay" item of discussion.

So, please give me a third choice on the menu of democracy.

Think of voting as the sustenance of civic virtue.  But like your real-life diet, you must be careful what you consume.  You must be careful on what you cast your vote.  Your vote is fucking sacred.  It is SACRED.  Don't toss it away because you must vote for, for, for SOMEONE!!!  Right now, you've only got two choices; one with a D (for dumb fucks) and one with an R (for really fucking stupid).  Continued consumption of these two items is sure to make you unhealthy.  It sure isn't doing much for our nation, is it?

Coming Out of the Closet

I am incredibly hesitant to label myself.  Other than “Marine,” which has defined me far more than any other label, I really abhor the idea of being grouped in with anyone on just about anything.  Perhaps I relish the role of “outsider,” or perhaps it’s a defense mechanism that allows me to “fit in” and semi-identify with all manner of people.  Besides the foreboding feeling that I’m coming upon the middle part of my life having accomplished very little (which is in fact rather absurd), I do not generally engage in enough self-reflection to allow myself to answer the questions that the previous sentence engenders.

For years, I’ve had misgivings about “conservatism” and “liberalism” and it’s saddened me that those are really the only two viable camps in which a person can make a home, ideologically.  It has always struck me odd that most everyone indeed DOES fall inside those two camps; on almost every issue they are in complete agreement with the ideological grounds of one camp over another.  You’re either a liberal, and identify strongly with token liberal issues (abortion, gay marriage, regulation of industry) or are a conservative, and identify strongly with token conservative issues (abortion, gay marriage, deregulation of industry).  I often thought that these stances were intellectually inconsistent – how can you want the freedom to do whatever you want in your personal life, but then wish for mind-numbing government control over other aspects of society such as schools and the market?  Conversely, how can you want free markets but want draconian laws specifying who you can sleep with in your own house?  The whole thing was just plain odd to me.  Where I grew up, there was no such thing as “libertarians."  Sure, I did know people who might have been libertarians and had libertarian ideals, they just didn’t know it.  So they suffered through cognitive dissonance as it pertained to reconciling the beliefs of their “camp” with the beliefs of their mind.  Most were “conservatives” and it was just easier to toe the line.

And really, that might be the reason I don’t label myself.  I never had a group with which to identify while growing up.  I couldn’t understand how I was the only person who, for example, believed that a woman can choose an abortion if she’d like, but also thought government was too big, too unwieldy, and too god damned intrusive.

Nowadays, I do realize that I was and am more of a libertarian than anything else.  But still, I resist calling myself that.  I will say it in private.  But one gets the distinct impression that to do so in public is akin to political suicide – Ron Paul isn’t a libertarian, nor is his son.  In fact, his son Rand recently wrote an article distancing himself from that label.  Why?  Because no one knows what the hell a libertarian is, apparently.  Or, as Rand says, it’s simply because people have the WRONG idea of what a libertarian is.  I will also say that the rabidity of Ron Paul’s supporters in 2008 turned me off from the label “libertarian.”  It also turned me off from Ron Paul (though he and I do disagree on matters of foreign affairs and defense).  So you have two of the most recognizable libertarian politicians who…aren’t even libertarians.  I think there exists a branding problem.  I say this because I really think that more Americans identify with libertarianism than exists members of the Libertarian Party (to which I do not belong – see above).  I’d go so far as to say that the MAJORITY of 18th and early 19th century Americans were libertarians, to one degree or another.  They may not have believed that a person should be a homosexual or other distinctly religious things, but I’d guess that they mostly thought that those decisions should be left up to, get this: the individual.

Maybe that’s the problem, or say, the incompatibility of libertarianism in the minds of most people today.  Certainly there exists a large number of libertarians that don’t “believe” in abortion, but think that the choice to have one is best left to the person.  However, most people in general, I think, view these sorts of issues as issues in which the state SHOULD be intimately involved.  More accurately, perhaps, is the notion that “freedom” only exists so far as you agree with the particular freedom in question.  I really think this is a true statement.  For example, you have people who claim to be about “freedom of religion” but vehemently oppose the construction of a mosque near supposed holy land in NYC; they only like freedom of religion if they benefit from it (and simply forget about arguing rule of law – they’re interested strictly in the emotional).  I’d bet my entire salary that these are the same people that will protest the removal of Christian crosses from publicly funded road-side memorials erected for slain policemen.   They want the government to prevent a privately funded Muslim mosque/civic center from being built, but also want the government to allow publicly funded religious memorials.  They don’t really believe in freedom of religion – they believe in freedom of THEIR religion FROM other religions (or lack of).  Imagine the uproar were Muslim symbols to be publicly funded.  The possibility of religion being explicitely personal and leaving government out of it entirely almost never occurs to them.  You could note the same inconsistencies in virtually every issue of “freedom.”  Whereas liberalism and conservatism serve a great deal as moral compasses to the adherants of each (or immoral guides if you’re on the other side), libertarianism doesn’t do that at all.  It leaves the choices up to the person, which is probably part of the reason it has difficulty finding people who might become members.  The problem is that our political parties are now the definers of morality.  Libertarianism doesn’t have to do that, and that scares people.

I can only wonder if the main players in either camp even believe in the basic tenets of their ideology anymore – the flock simply goes along with whatever the shepherds say, so their understanding of the complexities of any particular issue is moot.  This is simply slavish devotion to talking points.  They’re like patrician Romans in the late Republic; they paid lip service to the gods to reap political benefits, but didn’t think that they really existed.  Conservatives, to whom libertarians have often been closely compared, aren’t conservative anymore, at least not fiscally.  They talk the great talk about fiscal conservation, but that’s all it is.  The kicker is, I don’t think that the leaders of these groups have more than a superfluous understanding of any of their pet issues – it’s talking points deep (One can see this in the talk of Obama’s Islam and citizenship – they’ve been giving talking points and that’s as far as their understanding goes; call it the Palinization of politics, though it began long ago.  Max Baucus represents the liberal side, as it pertains to health care legislation…).

What is my point, other than to compose beautiful writing on issues about which no one cares?  I suppose my point is that I sort of wish that everyone were a libertarian, because that would mean people would largely leave each other alone to live their own lives in whatever manner they saw fit.  It’s the embodiment of “live and let live.”  But people simply cannot do this, and must seek to subjugate others and force them to live by their rules; to do otherwise is somehow an affront to their personal moral code (hence the phrase often bandied about like some sort of rally cry – “This is a Christian Nation!”).  If everyone were libertarians, they could really believe it when they say, “I don’t agree with you, but I support your right to say it.”  As it stands right now, they believe nothing of the sort.  If everyone were libertarians, they could really believe it when they say that we live in the freest country on earth.  As it stands right now, we have archaic laws that stifle freedom.  If you don't believe me, you should try to buy a pack of clove cigarettes for your own personal consumption on your own property.  You can't.  Because they're banned for sale in the US.  If everyone were libertarian, we might not have $13 trillion in debt to go along with our bloated, inefficient government and social programs and crumbling highway system.

My other main point, which might very well be lost in the verbosity of my prose, is to say that libertarianism has a branding problem.  Libertarian politicians don’t want to be called libertarians.  How can regular people admit to being such a…a…a…THING!, when these people won’t admit to it?  Hardly anyone even knows what a libertarian is, nor do they know what it would mean for them if libertarianism were popular (i.e. yes, Suzy, you can still believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, and you can choose not to practice it, but you can’t tell Bobby that he cannot).  The branding issue might as well be smacking us in the face with a ball peen hammer.

The Faultline Movement, such that it is (or isn’t), is my way of formulating some personal political philosophy.  I suppose that it’s more about me defining myself than fomenting real change from the grass roots level, or at least equally so.  Perhaps libertarianism really is too tainted by false notions to make a meaningful change.  I don’t know.  Perhaps being a libertarian is akin to being gay – it takes a bit, perhaps a lot more than a bit, of moral courage to come out, and sometimes it’s just easier to stay in.  That way you don’t have to answer so many questions.  Questions you’re not even sure HOW to answer, because you no longer fit into the neat, tidy little boxes of Gingrich and Clinton.  After all, we humans like conformity; we like feeling like we belong.

Maybe it’s time to redefine what it is to be a lover of personal freedom.  Or maybe it’s just time I came out of the closet.