Don’t look now, Toto. We’re rotting. Does it bother anyone else out there that almost all of this season’s campaign ads, even those supporting relatively decent candidates, are petty and misleading? “Well, if you’re gonna call me a bad name, I’m gonna call you a bad name. Nyaa Nyaa Nyaa.” How undignified. What does it say about human nature or overripe civilization? If I had children who started down that dismal slope—“Well, he did this!” and “She did that!”– I’d slap both their behinds and take away their rawhide chew-toys.
Does anyone even remember The High Road these days? Not content to restrict themselves to unflattering facts, campaign ads wallow in sleazy innuendo, associating their opponents with everyone and everything that market research has indicated the voters they’re targeting despise. When Sally McSilly accuses Ron Barber of cozying up to Nancy Pelosi it’s like saying he’s willfully stepped in dog poop and will gleefully track it all over The Constitution. But Barber’s ads are loathsome, too. What kinds of morons are fooled by this negative crap? You and I are too smart, are we not? Simplistic ads pitched to smallminded people reinforce stupidity and demean democracy.
It sometimes feels tempting to boycott the whole sordid mess and just not vote. The system, in its present state, is deeply out of whack, and anyone who wins or even gets to run at all has almost certainly been tainted by the process, as certain ill-starred babies are by birth.
Democracy, like mothers’ milk and deep-dish apple pie, is one of those concepts we’re taught to revere from the start. Perhaps there’s really no such thing. True democracy has rarely been attempted, much less achieved, because it runs against the grain of animal honesty. Where one looks out for Number One, and, perhaps, for one’s family or clan. Quite simply, you get what you can. (As per Ayn Rand.) The chief commandment of biological prosperity is COMPETE SUCCESSFULLY—Dominate and, if necessary, destroy anyone who might eat you, your children, or your chocolate mousse. It’s Me, Me, Me and Might Makes Right. Among humans, animal nature in its pure form manifests as monopoly, oligarchy, or tyranny.
It’s ironic that ancient Greece, long touted as democracy’s birthplace, was a society built upon slavery. The lofty notion of one man/one vote applied only to male citizens of the ruling class. (Women or Mexicans need not apply.)
Hey, remember that discussion of vectors in high school science class? That’s the notion that forces pushing in different directions will arrive at some resultant compromise, according to their strength and mass. Por ejemplo, if one force is coming in from 11:00 and another, equivalent force, from 7:00, their combined effect will move toward 3:00—a compromise or average, so to speak. This holds true unless the two forces are truly diametrically opposed, in which case what results is heat and stress—wasted energy. In politics it’s pretty much the same; when different points of view cannot agree or compromise, no meaningful movement occurs. And that, boys and girls, is called Capitol Hill—where The Impasse Is King. Lewis Lapham, former longtime editor of Harper’s, who now has his own magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, often says, “Democracy is a very messy process.” (And that, kiddies, is called understatement.)
Democracy implicitly presumes The Golden Rule, so it can be exploited if folks don’t play by the rules— DISTORTED BY THOSE WHO EQUATE THE WORD “MORAL” WITH “GAUCHE.” Democracy, if it deserves that name, assumes good faith: we’re working not only for the success of our particular interests but also for the success of the system—of democracy itself. That this is sometimes not the case is evident, of course. Can you say “J.P. Morgan Chase” or “Citigroup” or “Goldman/Sachs”? (Those greedy, underhanded pigs who kept their diapers dry by climbing up their neighbors’ backs.)
And yet, despite its weaknesses and sometimes grievous flaws, democracy’s the best device we humans have thus far devised for trying to achieve sound, balanced laws. Let’s pray for us.