Tag Archives: democracy

Calexit

The vote counting continues. Thus far Clinton has accrued approximately 2.5 million more popular votes than Trump. Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues – “how can this be? Democracy!?” The democracy game depends in large part on how one slices the pie. Democracy is fundamentally arbitrary insofar as the rules for inclusion are based on imaginary invisible lines in the dirt. Just take a look at a map of gerrymandered congressional districts; those distended and warped puzzle pieces forensically betray the party of their author. We could easily redraw state boundaries that would give Clinton a win; likewise we could draw new state boundaries that would give Trump an even larger electoral college win. But let’s play this game: if we look solely at popular vote within two distinct geographical areas we find a stark contrast. The first region is California and the second region is every other state except California. In California, Clinton handily won by 4 million votes. But in the other not-California region Trump won by 1.5 million. If direct democracy popular voting is going to be the new gold standard, then would it not be a crime to force the entirety of not-California to suffer under a Clinton presidency merely because one state, California, wished it to be so? Indeed, remove just one more state from that mix, New York, and the differential climbs to a 3 million more for Trump in the new country known as not-California-or-New-York.

Oh but you argue that’s disingenuous, we are “one country.” But are we? Borders are arbitrary, there is no physical law of nature that dictates biological entities living at these coordinates on a sphere must be irreversibly bound into a political union. Unions exist only so long as the parties wish it. Indeed, union dissolution is the last vestige of the people’s right to counter federal overreach. Yes, we’re talking about the “s” word: secession, an end to that “indivisible” union. Before November 7, 2016 such talk was ridiculed by the left (in straw man like fashion) to be the bailiwick of racists. However, now that the left no longer holds the reins of power they have suddenly discovered the merits of federalism, states rights, and even (gasp) secession. There is currently a movement for “Calexit”, that is the idea that California should leave the union and becomes it’s own country. A Calexit success would finally sever that peculiar linkage of secession to slavery in the American psyche. Normalization of secession would release a long neglected cudgel against expanding federal power.

The mere fact that secession is on the table as an option is further proof of the failure of the constitution (or rather the failure of men to be bound by it). The principals of federalism embodied in that document gave most power to the states with only a narrow set of enumerated powers granted to the federal government. Were that still the case no one would even care who the president was.

Party Time

The American political party duopoly is a curious thing. Every other modern democratically run state has multiple political parties that freely compete for votes in order to establish their representative share of the people’s voice within the government. But that’s not the case in America; here we have two parties that share total control of the state apparatus on a semi-regular seesawing 8-year cycle. The curious thing is that no one questions why this would be? Is it that in other countries there are four, five, or six different more nuanced mixtures of political opinion but somehow when you cross the American border human minds undergo a transformation that imparts upon them the capacity to only hold allegiance to one of two political mindsets?

As you might have guessed there is no magic involved at all. Wherever you find constrained or limited options you will find government pulling the strings from behind black cloth. Political parties are not institutions established by the constitution. Indeed they are not necessary at all for our government to operate. Political parties are private institutions, businesses really, and are the product of the natural tendency of people with similar views to work together for common cause. That is all perfectly fine. The problem occurred over time. Whenever one party gained control, they would pass laws (erect barriers) making it that much harder for opposing parties to gain access to the ballot box. If your opponents can’t get their name on the ballot that tends to increase the likelihood you will remain in office.

Simultaneously they made the process of their campaigning that much easier by passing laws (providing assistance) that authorized the government to use public resources to assist with internal party business (i.e. nominating primaries) thereby supporting the illusion that party business is really state business. That is to say, these private businesses (Democrat Party™ and Republican Party™) have the cojones to get the public to pay for their private primary elections that ultimately are entirely pointless, as it is the party delegates that decide the nominee, not the voter. This process is merely an insidious trick to dupe the people into feeling as though they have a voice in the process so that they come to view the primary process as party of “democracy” when it is nothing more than a privately run, and publicly paid for, straw poll. This process has gone on so long that most people are unaware of the distinction and simply view the “primaries” as part of the normal political process of electing someone to office. They are not. They are private events held in public, paid for by that public, masquerading as democracy in action.

These political parties care not one wit about your vote or what you think. Because they are both private organizations they can ultimately pick whomever they want to be the nominee. They prefer to have the blessing of the voters upon their anointed candidate in order to give the people the illusion of choice. People are more easily controlled if they feel like they have some control of their life – if they feel like they have a choice, even the illusion of choice, they will accept a result even if they do not agree with it.

Duopoly control is further assured since most elections do not require the winner obtain a majority of the vote if by some miracle a third candidate appears on the ballot. This rules out runoff elections, which afford voters the ability to rank their choices. The deck is then further stacked against the third party candidate as people make a pragmatic rather than a principled choice to ensure the “most evil” candidate does not win

Political parties have co-opted the authority of government in order to ensure their continued stranglehold on power in this country. This is not democracy. This is not freedom. False choice is not real choice. We laugh at countries with only one name on the ballot and yet somehow only two names on the ballot seems perfectly reasonable. If you truly believe in democracy then you must demand the people be free to choose from all options. Every flavor of ballot access laws should be repealed, campaigning on the ballot (D or R next to the name) should be banned, all winners must have a majority decided through instant runoff style elections, and the Democrat and Republican parties should either have private nominating conventions or pay for their own public elections.