Everyone bitches about the partisanship here in Washington, and while the “red team blue team” game gets old fast, the real problem is not so much that people have strongly partisan policy preferences. It’s rather that most have no beliefs at all other than the bone-deep conviction that the other party is evil and wrong. Politicians and voters alike suffer from this syndrome.
Surveys of the American electorate show that, while opinions are nearly impossible to change, most people have stunted political ideologies that extend little beyond party preference. The sad fact is most Americans don’t even know what their own parties stand for. Party preference has almost nothing to do with objective self interest, nothing to do with reasoned assessments of evidence. It has everything to do with how your parents voted and what they told you as a child.
This is not to say that the Average Joe is stupid for not knowing all about political economy or the things his representatives do in office. This information is actually quite boring and difficult to obtain. Far from stupid, Americans are by and large skilled and knowledgeable people who hold highly specialized jobs that other Average Joes would be totally incapable of doing.
Making thoughtful judgments about complex policy issues takes time that people don’t have, energy that they can’t spare. Anybody see where this argument goes yet?
Why don’t we just let the worker bees be worker bees and us natural born leaders will make sure the hive keeps humming along. Most people can’t be expected to know what’s best for them. Just leave it to the experts.
Ok, so every totalitarian movement in the history of the world has made this argument. Politics are dirty. What’s the solution? We’re going to do away with them!
I only go down this intellectual road because the totalitarians, however wacky, really are responding to a fundamental human need. All of us need to be guided and mentored and formed; we are incomplete and incompetent in so many ways.
However the state is just another group of people with all the corresponding flaws – only these people declare their own infallibility and claim the right to shape us as they see fit.
Now we don’t live in a single party totalitarian state (yet) but take a look at the current political parties and try to sort out their philosophies of government, the values that define them. Look inside the cardboard boxes labeled Republican and Democrat and there are lots of odds and ends, but one artifact dominates the jumble.
Both ruling parties (and the bureaucracies and the mainstream media) are absolutely and totally committed to the preservation of the institutional framework of the U.S. Government. It sends them paychecks, it confers power and prestige, it is their forum, their life, their air.
Any group, coalition, person or organization that seriously questions “business as usual” will be crushed from all sides as a traitor or a madman.
While the status quo has always been powerful and there are good arguments for not rocking the boat without a reason, the status quo tendencies of any party are reinforced the longer it stays in power. If the result were mere stasis, I wouldn’t have such a problem.
However, the result of firmly entrenched and evenly opposed parties is much more insidious. It is a sort of decay, both in the quality of policy and in the ability of the population to think critically about it.
I fear our polity is inching toward its demise so slowly that we won’t even be able to identify the moment when it was definitively screwed. We need new parties, fresh blood, clear thinking, and for GOD SAKE some people in office who aren’t career politicians.
Rant off.
