NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 08: People watch voting results at Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s election night event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center November 8, 2016 in New York City. Clinton is running against Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Images North America 681261599 621808502
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t vote for either (or any) of them – for reasons economic, philosophic, and moral. None could enunciate a consistent philosophy of civil liberties and personal freedoms, of privacy, of respect for the individual, of peace, of a cessation of foreign invasions and bombing and death and refugee formation and arming rebels and provocative international tensions with global nuclear powers, of a way out of ever-increasing national debt that threatens the sustainability of the nation and the promises made to citizens, of a fair playing field for businesses against crony capitalist corporations, of monetary policy which stabilizes the currency and denies special advantage to the banksters at the expense of savers and the middle class, of an end to the destructive and failed Drug War,… of many issues across the politico-economic spectrum.
What politicians and their ilk realized millennia ago is that they don’t need to answer these types of questions. They don’t need to be philosophically consistent or plan for the future or make the world a better place. To serve their interests, their income, and their power lust they only need to pick a few issues that alarm the public, that isolate out single-issue voters to their side, that drive the people to the polls out of anxiety and fear. Those issues may be gay rights or abortion or gun control or taxes or pornography or drug legalities or any number of social services or health care or immigration or national security, etc, etc, etc. While a politician may occasionally happen upon a reasonable position or two on any such issues, being generally unprincipled persons, it is unlikely that their overall platforms will be consistent or meaningful. Additionally, while government is the great fiction whereby we all live at the expense of each other (thank you, Mr. Bastiat), the game is set up as zero-sum, a fixed pie, as necessarily having a winner and loser, typically a reluctant payor and an undeserving recipient. The very purpose of politics is to divide, to fragment, to classify, to create oppositions – and based upon those divisions and enmities, to wrest control in order to derive benefits at the expense of others. Thus, government powers grow: taxes, mandates, regulations, prohibitions, fines, incarcerations, licensing, permissions. The tool gets stronger and bigger and more encompassing until he who wields it has powers to wreak havoc, to threaten, to intimidate and to control.
Today, a few days after this recent presidential election, I have friends and family divided to Left and Right (whatever that is supposed to mean). Some are elated that their few important issues will be supported by the winner, and some are genuinely fearful that issues of extreme importance to them will be addressed in ways that could alter their lives. Few are able to recognize the perceived threats that the candidates posed to others of differing belief systems, lifestyles, world views or concerns. In an era so self-professed, or at least supposedly inclined towards, diversity and inclusion, there has not likely been a less inclusive environment in my lifetime than what exists immediately following voters’ results just 72 hours ago. But that lack of diversity and the resultant tensions are not an accident. They are an unspoken, but undeniable and purposeful, result of the very machinery of politics and government. Classifications, identity politics, religion, nationality, race, gender and sexuality are the core distinctions which are used as wedges by the astute and cunning political class. Mixed with an ever-increasingly powerful government, with its double-edged sword which swings according to the elected partisan in current power, there must be losers, victims, aggrieved and oppressed. Government is a game of fear, of self-defense, of retaliation, of threat by force. It has always been so. The shock is not that this is the reality, but that in our age of information and communication, that people remain oblivious to being made pawns in the game which is reliant on their validation, authorization, participation and voluntary subjugation.
I am sorry and sad that people that I care about are hurt and that people close to me may be fractured by these issues in the drive to protect that which they consider very important. They are not wrong. They are just different from one another. They have unique interests, beliefs, drives and views. And the American system does not allow for difference. The system of democracy is designed to force the 49% into the construct decided upon by the 51%, and that construct becomes more tentacled and invasive with time. Metastatic. It increasingly gains control over every aspect of life: work, family, profession, recreation, property.
Most will believe that the answer to their current plight is to have elected “the other guy,” then everything would be better,… although not for the citizen against whom the pendulum has now swung and whose most important interests are now at risk. At what point do we realize that the paradigm presented is flawed? That the beliefs and systems inculcated in us from childhood are neither inspired nor correct? That creating bigger and stronger controls puts everyone at risk? That a government strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to deny you it (thank you, Mr. Jefferson)? That perhaps very little should be left in the purview of the pseudo-enlightened class and the controlling bodies that they direct? That there can be no such thing as “the public interest” because those interests are infinitely diverse? That perhaps it should be no business of government who marries whom or how one makes a living or spends one’s income or what one puts in one’s own body? That a government and its elected officials that are powerful enough to scare you may just be too powerful altogether? If you create a government large and intrusive enough to force your preferences upon others, what do you think happens when you lose control of it? Or when a tyrant or sociopath or imbecile gains control of it? (Which has actually been the case for decades, in the opinion of some). How many question the very design of a system which mandates obedience and reverence towards a few select individuals, as if they were divinely appointed kings or demi-gods? How many confuse government with society? Political boundaries with communities? Politicians with statesmen? Ideologies with ideas? Demagoguery with leadership by example? How many refuse to be either master or slave? How many recognize the benefits of voluntary interaction to mutual benefit, absent coercions, threat or fraud?
I am sorry that so many hurt, are angry or feel extreme anxiety with the recent relative majority’s choice. I did not vote a Master for you. I do not desire to control you or take from you, yet there are many that do desire those controls and expropriated loot. The way forward is unlikely to be found in the failures of the past. If we desire freedom, prosperity and respect, we must be willing to grant the same universally. We must deny the agitators and dividers our emotional energy. We must remove from the public and legal spheres those things that do not belong there, e.g. marriage licenses, ingestibles, beliefs, commerce, perhaps the education of our children,…. We must recognize the failures of our systems, refuse to endorse them, withhold our validation of them, supplant them with community and society and family rather than majority-appointed managers and controllers. Ultimately, it is not red versus blue, but rather the manipulative state and its actors versus you. In our societies and associations we find inclusion, and we work for common goals to mutual benefit. In politics and government, participation is either an offensive move for gain or a defensive maneuver to protect self and property. As you consider issues in relation to moral and philosophic consistency, you, too, may find yourself unable to validate those which maneuver to get themselves put on ballots to become your leaders and directors – not for your benefit, but for theirs. What happens when the majority rejects the sociopaths, the emotional manipulators and the snake oil salesmen? It can’t be any worse than what you’re experiencing now. Some of the political disruption and unrest this political cycle is likely an ember of this societal awakening and recognition that the individual is a host for parasitic forces beyond his control. I don’t care if you’re queer, black, Mexican, a privileged white boy, or even a lawyer. Take the blue pill with me, let’s turn our backs on the dysfunction, and travel down the road together.