California Expert Software
Truth is Everything
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California Expert Software
Truth is Everything |
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Warped People
We have arrived at the season of political conventions and partisan jostling in this Presidential election year. While the November, 2004 election is touted by Democrats and Republicans as the most important one in decades, I find myself notably indifferent. Looking back, I can see myself becoming more and more disconnected from Presidential politics, and politics generally, since 1992. A decade or more ago, I believed electing a President would make a difference, would solve problems. Little by little, I stopped feeling that way. This year is the end of the process: I don't believe it makes much difference whether Bush or Kerry gets elected.
At this stage in American history, to believe a single election will make a big difference is to wish for salvation. It is to hope some jack will pop out of a box, say "Boo!", and our problems will run away. Would it were so.
There were times in American history when an election did make a big difference; e.g., 1860 and 1932. Lincoln's election prevented any resolution of the Southern Secession except by force. Roosevelt's election eventually created the New Deal which dominated American political and economic life for 2 generations. But even gigantic upheavals such as the Civil War and the Great Depression did not interrupt the main threads of American life. After the Civil War, the South went back to the ways of the Plantation Society, transforming slavery into apartheid within a generation. Despite Northern control during the Great Depression, World War II, and Brown v Board of Education, the South regained power with the Nixon Administration, and is still in control, undoing the New Deal, the Great Society and the Civil Rights Acts.
The Southern representatives and their allies in the Rural West are powerful because of their longevity in office. Officeholders make friends and influence people. The longer they are there, the more influence they have. (That's called the "seniority system.") That influence is underpinned by control of taxes, which officeholders levy and spend. By catering to the rich and powerful, officeholders make it nearly impossible for unwashed provincials to protest or remove them from office. In other words, officeholders survive in cahoots with the elite classes by buying voter support.
In urban areas, the same sort of thing happens, but in more subtle ways. Most officeholders in urban States do not stay in office as long as their counterparts from the South and Rural West. Since these officeholders are in office for shorter periods, they have less control of taxes and less control of spending. This makes it difficult or impossible to buy off a majority for a long time. Larger and more diverse populations are probably the cause of shorter terms in office, because it is easier to offend someone and it is more difficult to control shifting alliances. While heterogeneous populations are more difficult to rule, core areas of urban America have supported certain political organizations (the "machine") for generations. The machine operates by supporting a front person - the salesperson - as the candidate, while real power remains in the "smoke filled rooms."
Either way, North or South, the dominant force is the power of institutions, not the people. Southern officeholders represent a more-or-less homogeneous population, a certain way of life tenaciously held. Northern officeholders represent the shifting interest groups who happen to pass through their fiefdoms. In no case are the people allowed to express themselves directly, without intermediation. As conservatives often snap, 'The United States is a Republic, not a democracy.'
The American system is set up to respond to the people, or so the mythology says. In reality, the Founding Fathers and their heirs were hard headed men, who had a great fear of "the people." America is not unique in having its myths and pretenses, but it is singular in earnestly professing the American Fairy Tale (AFT) to all who will hear. Moreover, it is an article of American faith that the AFT is really the way things are.
The AFT includes the idea that this is the land of opportunity, where anyone can be the next Horatio Alger. It includes the story that people may say whatever they want, do whatever they want, and be whatever they want. America is the land of independent, self-made Yeoman. America is right. America is different. Add to all that a desire to save souls, and you have reborn Imperialism: American Exceptionalism.
I've been a lifelong dissenter from the AFT. I just don't believe much of it is true for most people. As it is in other countries, today's Horatio Alger gets his start by being born among the elite. Horatio Alger doesn't work in a factory. Horatio Alger doesn't have to swallow the Company propaganda to keep his office job. Horatio Alger doesn't have to wait on his superiors, work extra hours and grovel appropriately when required. Horatio Alger doesn't have to do any of that out of fear the Company will write him off. Horatio Alger is a true American; he must live in the next town, because we know he does not live here.
Among the other myths included in the AFT is the idea that people elect their representatives freely, and are well represented, but I dissent from this as well. If people are so well represented, why are billions spent every election to convince them to vote for so-and-so? Does this effort reflect the staunch independence of our would-be Horatio Algers, or does it represent the brainwashing required to fool people into voting the way the elites want? Whichever way it is, does it matter? Perhaps, as I think, the system is set up to elect only certain people with certain views. There is some circumstantial evidence in favor of my views.
We all know the President is elected by the Electoral College (EC), not the voters. The EC is selected by the States using the same formula that governs the composition of Congress. In a hint of democracy, a few States, like Maine, allocate electors sort-of-proportionally (i.e., by Congressional District), but most States use the Unit Rule.1 The Unit Rule is, simply, winner take all. By and large, the minority in any State is poorly represented, if at all, among the electors. Thus, Presidential politics comes down to winning the required majority of electors; thus the concentration on States.
The Founding Fathers did not foresee the lopsided distribution of population that now exists, probably because they had no idea a technical society would evolve. The original formula - 2 Senators per State, and a certain number of Congressmen allocated according to population - was based on the notion that States were equipotent and probably not that far apart in population.2 The expansion of the United States after 1800 soon belied those assumptions. The majority of States in the center of the country are under-populated and over-represented in the Federal government. These are all, in the current lingo, Red States, peopled by hard core conservatives. Short of a major population redistribution (that would take a century or more), the compact between the States, represented in the Constitution, gives the South and Rural States an unintended permanent lock on Congress and the EC.
Because the Founding Fathers were concerned about the rights of the minority, and because some of the Southern States were reluctant to join the Union, the Constitution gave control of Federal power to the South. For a long time, Virginia was the center of American politics. After John Quincy Adams, the Presidency and the Congress was dominated by Southerners and their sympathizers until the Civil War. While the North controlled the Federal government during Reconstruction, the South was resurgent in the late 19th century until JFK's election. The Kennedy-Johnson Administrations deeply offended the South, which gave rise to Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy. Since 1968, the South is once again the dominant force in American politics. All of this was made possible by the Constitutional formula that gives each State two Senators and divides the House according to population, but does not prevent Gerrymandering and other tricks that give ambitious politicians an edge. (The latest example is Rep DeLay's Texas Takeover.)
Thus, at the Federal level, the majority of the people have no effective representation. That majority does not live in the South or Rural West; it lives on the Coasts and it is predominantly urban. At best, the urban majority has veto power over some of the more extreme measures proposed by the Southern-Rural alliance. Otherwise, the character of American government is, as it almost always was, determined by the minority. Our concern for the rights of the minority turned into minority rule.
Conservatives complain that the United States government is "tilted" toward the left , meaning that either New York or California has an undue influence on American politics. They also say that America is basically a conservative country which has been hijacked by the Liberal Establishment.
I'm not a conservative, and don't think the country is tilted. Conservatives are wrong about the tilt, because, in reality, the country has a big slump down its middle. That there is a slump is proved by the distribution of water. Over most of the country, from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, water flows downhill to the Mississippi, and eventually ends up in the Gulf Coast swamps of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. People living on the coasts are living on the edge, always fearing a tumble down the slope into the swampy slump. The slump is the center of the country, where conservatives live. Conservatives are right that America is a conservative country, because denizens of the slump control it. Who are those slump people? What follows is not a pretty picture, but it is what I see.
They are White. Many of them are descendants of poor Scottish and Irish Celts, and indentured Englishmen, who freed themselves of those restraints on the American Frontier. They made their way by removing any who stood in their way, mostly Indians, but also the French, Spanish and Mexicans who arrived before them. The settlers firmly believed other races and ethnic groups were inferior to themselves, and particularly believed that the Native Indians were not even human.
They only respect their own version of law and order, which is maintained by force of arms, individually and collectively. Their forefathers believed the land belonged to them, not to anyone else, by right of purchase, conquest and labor. They refused to recognize any title except that granted by their government, or by themselves to themselves, so felt justified in squatting on whatever parcel they fancied. If any prior settlers objected, they were liquidated.
They are militant Protestants, evangelical Christians. They are intolerant of people who do not share their particular beliefs. They will persecute people who practice different customs, because they believe they are right and everyone else is wrong. In the extreme, dissenters are liquidated. They often point out the difference between Christians and other people: "Christians are forgiven."
Slumpers, as I shall call them, are provincials. They have no use for the outside world. They have the poorest educational systems, and they are opposed to learning anything new. They are definitely opposed to Darwin and evolution. Many of them believe all you need is a Bible and a gun to get by. They love guns.
Slumpers don't like city slickers, artists, scientists and fancy lawyers. They detest homosexuals, lesbians and feminists. They hate anything identified as "librul." They `used to tell you the solution to female problems is "keep them barefoot and pregnant."
Slumpers are the people who put George W Bush in office. Senator Kerry wants to get elected by appealing to them, at least earning their acquiescence instead of their opposition.
I am not a Slumper. I could never be one. That's why I lost interest in elections.
Yesterday, I happened upon CSPAN's re-broadcast of portions of last week's NAACP convention. I felt very comfortable hearing NAACP Chairman Julian Bond. I was reminded of the same or similar words spoken by Presidential candidates Ralph Nader (Ind) and Dave Cobb (Green). I was amused and heartened by Dick Gregory. Theirs is a message I can support just about 100%.
What I don't understand is Bond's support for Sen Kerry, who doesn't support most of what Bond professed. It's nice to have a place at the table, but it is even better to get something you want.
1. In a letter to the Editor (BusinessWeek 7/26/2004 p19), Robert Jeffrey states that an analysis of the 2000 election by Congressional District shows that "... Bush would have won 293 votes to Gore's 245 ..." So, a "more democratic" system of selecting Electors could actually result in a less popular decision.
2. In fact, the 1789 population of some Southern States, such as Virginia, exceeded that of most urbanized States (Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania) on account of the huge number of slaves. It was only the White population of the South that was low compared to the North.
July 16-18, 2004
Last update: 11/07/2007
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