Wee, The People. Stealing Back Our Bought and Paid For Democracy.
by Jason John Bartholomew
April 2, 2017
I’m going to put this out there and then I’m withdrawing for awhile. Maybe some ambitious millennial will run with it. But I doubt it. Anyway, it needs be said.
Throughout the election, on some of your feeds, I repeatedly made some variation of the comment, “You do realize this is pointless, right? So relax. It doesn’t matter.” That bit of snark did not earn me any bonus points with anyone. And fair enough. Lots of people get into a rather heightened emotional state over politics during an election season. I used to be one of those people, being a bit of a news and policy junkie from before I was even eligible to vote. So certainly, I took elections very seriously.
I am not that person now. I don’t allow myself to listen to news and watch news and read news all day long anymore. I got very tired of being angry all the time and so despondent I couldn’t move. I also got tired of pacing the nights away having out loud debates with myself trying to wrangle what I thought might be a stellar solution to some issue that was eating away at me, for all the good homegrown Jason solutions have ever done. This here, too, will be an exercise in futility, a quality I have tragically elevated to an almost heroic status. Now, on the occasions I find myself needing a check-in with the current awfulness of the human condition, I prefer to read my news only, from a reputable source. These days I usually go with the Guardian UK. If you’re not reading your news, in my opinion, you still kinda “just don’t get it.”
See, I know something now that I did not know in my youth that prevents me from getting too bent out of shape over elections anymore. Actually, I know a couple of somethings, but they both translate into roughly “our vote is so fucking useless in the big scheme of things it’s farcical.” American democracy is as dead as coffin nails. I suspect you know this as well, and, if you were being entirely honest, always a stretch for many of you, it is this sad and demorsalizing truth that really has you so bent out of shape.
I still vote occasionally, but mostly just to prepempt that tired old mantra some inexplicably still cling to that says if I don’t, I forfeit my right to bitch about the state of the union. Weird, but ok. Empty pagentry it is then, as I do try to be pre-emptive when I can. It saves time. Besides, I live in a vote-by-mail state, so I can vote in my underwear. Empty pagentry in my underwear is sort of my thing. And, who knows? We disgruntleds may yet get ole Micky Mouse elected as a write-in candidate someday.
Still, for your vote, or mine, to really matter, and by really matter I mean steer and shape the policies that will impact our lives and determine future conditions in real and significant ways, a couple of things would have to be true that simply aren’t.
First, for your vote to significantly count, your elected officials would have to be responsive and accountable to you, the voters, and to you only. It would have to matter in a significant way which candidate actually won the election. This would mean that their one job would be to work on behalf of their constituents in an effort to make that constituency’s will have impact on the legislation and policies coming out of Washington, D.C. But geez, c’mon. The very notion of this being true is somewhat of an hysterical punchline.
Your Representatives and Senators aren’t tying to make you happy. Most of their efforts that involve you at all are about trying to placate and hoodwink you so they never have to admit what is really going on in American politics. Every day our “elected” officials are instead trying to appease Big Business, Big Industry, Big Oil and all the other members of the incestuous family of Big Money, because it is this Industrial-Military-Prison-Special-Interest-Complex that foots the bill and finances all the election campaigns of United States Congressfolk (or that finances their opponent’s campaigns if the current folks get out of line.) Campaigns are very expensive to run; obscenely expensive. It can’t be done in the present way without the deep, deep pockets of Big Money. And Big Money is more than generous in their financial support for American Democracy, happy to pitch in to make America grrrrreat! And yeah, well, ok. So what if those fat wads of cash may have a little bit of an agenda of their own? They deserve a little consideration, right? For greasing up the wheels on our star-spangled, liberty-and-freedom, election-day charade float? And so what if that little agenda is really the only agenda and so what if it has nothing to do with what’s best for you, your family, your future, or your inalienable human rights?
The greenback is now such the minion of that great Capitalist, In-God-We-Trust, that dollar bills, thus sayeth The High Court (seriously, high as fuck on something) are speech! No, really! But some of us are still pretending this isn’t a prank reality show. Dollar bills are now free speech! But never mind that. If it’s any consolation, talk is still cheap, like all the blah, blah, barf we keep going on about on every topic. It’s as if we imagine all this armchair intellectual chatter is actually relevant; that rigorous and open debate of the points of merit is all we need to get ourselves a damn decent and well-considered bit of legislation that does ‘Merica proud. (Affordable Care Act? Anyone? No?)
The other thing that would be necessary for your election to matter would be real, distinct options available to you when you step into the booth or tear open that safety envelope. At the very least, there would have to be a viable path available by which real diversity could reach the ballot. But our system is so constipated we can’t even get the more progressive of the two lefty Old Guard candidates on the ballot. Nope. Even across party lines, come election day, you are going to get to choose from the equivalent of Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke. That’s it. There will no coffee or alcoholic beverages on the menu. And filtered tap water? Oh honey, do you want a Flynt, MI catastrophe? Move along.
To make matters more dire, after our every-four-year display of heated political insanity, where the American people get all grandstand-y and rabid in a vaudevillian display of their gobsmacking ignorance of issues, ethics and how the world really works, we all usually then go right back to paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to our congress people. We go from feverishly unfriending all those “ignerents” who don’t agree with our precious, informed, reasoned and morally just stance (way too often the one we just adopted the night before during our favourite editorial-commentary-we-pretend-is-news-and-indepth-analysis), to having no idea who the cabinet members are or what’s not getting debated on the House or Senate Floor due to some chamber members’ absurd delusion they were sent by hard-working Americans to Congress with a mandate to be obstructionist and not do the business of the people while still collecting handsome paychecks and enjoying a vacation calendar that is embarrassingly indulgent. After all, they need that extra time off to do their real job; raise money from Big Donors so as to stay in office siphoning off cream in what amounts to tax funded welfare for the rich and shwarmy.
Never mind minding what the many far reaching agencies of our government apparatus are doing in our name, here and abroad. (I’ll give you a hint…those non-Americans that hate us? It’s not because of our liberty.) And nevermind those alphabet agencies that act as a sort of permanent, perpetual government, surviving above and beyond administration after administration all while operating with impunity and without accountability to either Congress, the Court, The White House, the American citizens or the Free Press. That’s not conspiracy theory paranoia, people, that’s the lay of the land. The spy and security agencies have well-established precedents for both lying to all branches of government as well as destroying critical evidence just as innuendo begins to crest into actual scandal. Oh yeah, and they also operate with secret budgets that shield them from oversight and scrutiny.
The short of it is this: There are lots of monied and powerful people in Washington and you’re not one of them. Any one of them can get in tomorrow afternoon to see your Congressperson so as to express their wants/needs/concerns. You, however, are not and will never be on tomorrow’s calendar, much less because you demanded it. When the moneybags do show up, they’ll often just happen to have a draft of the legislation they’d like to see signed into law, already drafted with just the precise language they want, tucked away in their attache case. And what about you? When was the last time you felt invited to just write the labor or health bill your family would like and hand that to your Senator or Representative.
Aw, come now. Don’t look so glum. Shall we stand up and sing the Star-Spangled Banner song? I hired the Blue Angels to do a fly-over and we have red, white and blue snow cones and fireworks. “Oh say can you see?”
No really! Can you? Can you fucking see?
And still, maybe because I’m just a stupid, naive fool trying to get that great big feel of hope, or, more likely, because I’m from a state with some of the best legal weed in the world, I insist…
It does not have to be this way!!!
But that is exactly the way it is going to be unless wee, the little people, say “enough!” And I don’t mean say it to each other on Facebook.
Your government is never going to give you smart, sane policies that serve your community or your family unless you make them. And you can’t make them unless you are willing to do something. Something radical. Something daring. Something big and dangerous.
We live in a divided nation, always at each others throats across false divides of party, race, class, coast, you name it. It is a constant cacophony of Us vs. Us. We all know if we don’t build some bridges soon and start getting along better, we are so beyond doomed. But if there is one thing most Americans seem to agree on it’s that our government is in the pocket of Big Money and is no longer responsive to us.
Let’s change that by the next presidential election. Here’s how:
Let us agree to agree and agree we will go back to disagreeing only after we accomplish this one critical thing that will allow all our usual disagreeing to actually be productive again. Let’s start a Wee, The Little People Of The United States bi-partisan, grassroots campaign with one simple ultimatum to Washington, D.C. “Fix campaign finance and get money out of politics or Wee, the People, en masse, are going to boycott the next presidential election with the eyes of the whole world on us. Do it or we will tank the whole process, so help us God.”
And then let’s meet in every Town Hall and on every college campus and on street corners every weekend with clipboards for the next four years and build a peaceful solidarity that gives us our government back. And who knows, we might even find there’s a person or two across that line in the sand that we actually kinda like, that isn’t really so evil and awul after all. Hell, we may want to have them over for a cookout so the kids can play together and we can explore how it is such nice people who make such good potatoe salad have such bone-headed, different ideas about the world than we do.
Wee, the People. Or really, way more than not voting, you have no right to complain.
