Our National Politics Shouldn’t Matter this Much
Here is the only remedy for election stress disorder
This is the most important election in history. Everything is riding on what happens this November. If “so and so” wins the election, how will we ever survive?
Have you uttered any statements like these recently? Are you feeling overwhelmed by this election season? Are you anxious, fearful, angry, sad, or frustrated? Have you threatened to move elsewhere (e.g., Canada or Barbados) if your candidate doesn’t win?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you might be suffering from “election stress disorder,” a concept developed by psychologist Dr. Steven Stosny.
Symptoms include the obsessive refreshing of your social media feeds and continuously checking the news for updates, and having a deeply emotional reaction to what you consume (e.g., polling data).
It can also be marked by a bit of political motive attribution asymmetry. This is when we fall into the trap of assuming our political ideology is based on love, while our opponents are based on hate.
Has the election produced some relational sadness for you? Is your hope in humanity on the decline? Most importantly, are you beginning to question the character of close friends and acquaintances that see things differently?
What is the diagnosis? Are you suffering from election stress disorder? If so, you are not alone. A recent survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found 56% of U.S. adults view the upcoming election as a significant stressor.
Well, in the next few minutes, I am going to reveal the only remedy for this disorder, as captured in the following statement by Logan Albright:
If we focus less on beating the other side and more on creating an antifragile system largely immune to electoral swings, politics will lose its life-or-death significance, and maybe we can even stop trying to kill each other all the time.
Why do our Politics Seem to Matter so Much
It is the perversion of the law and a misguided view of the purpose of government that, as stated by Frederic Bastiat, “gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and politics in general.
How has the law been perverted? And, what is the purpose of government? These are loaded and heavily debated questions, for sure.
Let’s look at the Declaration of Independence, which states that governments are instituted to secure the inalienable and natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., property) that we enjoy as humans.
Governments secure these rights and maintain order by establishing and enforcing the law. So, what is the law? It, as stated by Bastiat, is the “organization of the natural right to lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces.”
As a substitutional force, the law exists to prevent injustice and punish it when it occurs. It is intended to keep people from harming others (i.e., violating their natural rights).
The law is perverted when we ask the government to carry the burden of solving all of our problems.
Beyond justice, to organize other human activities such as labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion, the law must act as a positive force. It can only do so by restricting an individual’s use of his or her property (i.e., the fruits of his or her labor).
In other words, the law becomes an instrument of plunder — of injustice. So, our politics takes on exaggerated importance. The law is perverted because it is now used to protect and advance specific interests and purposes, rather than prevent injustices.
So, guess what happens. The people we place in positions of power begin to matter far more than they should.
Bastiat, in The Law, foreshadowed our current state of affairs when he stated:
As long as the law is diverted from its true purposes … political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious.
As long as these ideas prevail, it is clear that the responsibility of government is enormous. Good fortune and bad fortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality, virtue and vice — all then, depend upon political administration. It is burdened with everything. It undertakes everything. It does everything; therefore, it is responsible for everything.
Look at all of the responsibilities we have turned over to our government bureaucracies.
Feeding the hungry, rectifying inequities, caring for the sick, nurturing children, tending to the elderly, setting wages, lending money, balancing trade, protecting consumers, regulating industries, and a whole host of other social and moral ills …
Is it any wonder that our elections create so much stress? There really is too much riding on what happens in November.
Consider, for example, the fears surrounding the death of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg. Many, as highlighted by Logan Albright, are terrified that a Trump appointee might affect the rights and privileges enjoyed by millions of Americans. He states:
… the fact that people expect such far-reaching consequences from the death of a single individual proves how profoundly broken our system has become.
The Only Remedy
Unfortunately, there are no remedies for election stress disorder that can be applied solely at the level of the individual. The calls for social media and news detox won’t do the job.
Likewise, a return to Bastiat’s vision of the law isn’t likely. The ship has already sailed. Governments everywhere will always be asked to do more than prevent injustice.
This, however, does not mean that we have to fall into the two-party trap and continue wrestling back and forth for control over the levers of national power. We can and should seize the opportunity to decentralize some of this power. Much of what matters to us, then, will not be at risk of being wholly overturned with every national election.
The remedy for election stress disorder will begin with the following from us all:
- We must stop looking to the government, especially at the national level, to solve all of our problems.
Many things should be done in society, but not by the government. The choice before us is not one of central planning or nihilism.
- To avoid this false choice, we should embrace strong local self-government and the happy combination presented in Federalist 10:
The great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.
To much power has gravitated toward the center, making our national politics matter too much. This centralization has removed much of the decision-making function from the people. It’s not surprising, then, that people feel that they have lost control of the forces that govern their lives. The irony is that many have doubled down on national politics instead of turning their attention to the local level.
Focusing on the local level can breed a spirit of volunteerism and an interest in solving problems collectively based on shared interests and common cause. It can relieve us of the false notion that everything has to be the same, and the control of politicians that would like to convince us of otherwise.
- Finally, we will need to develop an affinity for the rule of law, especially at the national level.
“To be governed by the whims of men,” as stated by Cleon Skousen, “is to be subject to the ever-changing capriciousness of those in power. In such a society, nothing is dependable. No rights are secure.”
These are the beginning steps of a remedy. A remedy that would begin putting the law in its most proper place. May we continue to heed the warnings and thoughts of Bastiat, who said:
The law is justice — simple and clear, precise, and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit — if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic — you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?
If we don’t heed these warnings, we can look forward to a world where madmen like Donald Trump and Joe Biden continue to shape the landscape under which we will live, and our national elections will continue to matter too much. This seems like an easy choice for me.
