Election Reflection

People, for better or worse, tend to be a credulous bunch. Sure, there are exceptions, but all in all the overwhelming majority of the human race is quite comfortable believing things they know little about, and then turning that belief into an identity ... or even worse ... a suit of armor that is used to deflect anything that contradicts their belief. This is the root of a logical fallacy called confirmation bias. It's also the thing that keeps religious and political enthusiasts closed to new ideas, interpretations, etc. I always think about this on election night. I think even more about how to crack the armor.

Before I begin, I will be honest with you. I sit here this evening proud of the fact that in 28 years of voting and political activity, I have never voted for a winning candidate for president. I've voted in every election, but always for the candidate with whom I agreed. I realize it's a futile gesture on my part. Liberty is not palatable to the overwhelming majority of the electorate, because they're addicted to government. They're truly convinced that government is there to help them with their problems, catch them when they fall, and bail them out when they're stupid. Before we can convince them of the value of liberty, we must first cause them to question the very notion that government works, and that the majority is wise.

So the Chosen One has been elected. Soon his followers will reach new heights of ecstasy as they envision a world of bliss instantly coming into being thanks only to the benevolent light shining off of Barack Obama's smile. They've won. It's all gonna be alright now. This naive notion of the president would astound me, had I not long ago accepted the utter ignorance of large parts of the American electorate.

For the most part, this supermajority ignores two basic facts:

1. Winning an election doesn't mean you're right - just that you've hoodwinked more people into believing in you than your opponent did.


2. History gives us a good idea of how wisely the majority has chosen in the past.

Let's take a quick look back in time. I'll arbitrarily begin in 1964, only because that was the first election in US history that some baby boomers were allowed to vote in (the world was a different place before they came along and subsequently spawned, and I would argue that the changes have not all been for the better). So, here's how wisely the majority chose:

• 1964 - LBJ wins big. His guns and butter policies are going to end poverty, cure racism, protect South Vietnam and generally solve everyone's problems. By 1968 he managed to cheese off so many people that he dropped out of the race rather than be embarrassed any further.


• 1968 - Richard Nixon wins. In 1972 he wins big. He taps into the heart of the "Silent Majority", promises to end the Vietnam war with "honor", and vows to bring law and order back to the country. He also extends the Vietnam war into Cambodia, institutes wage and price controls, and winds up having to resign rather than be impeached for breaking laws about wiretapping, perjury and burglary.


• 1974 - Jimmy Carter wins. In a folksy rejection of a GOP that gave us not only Richard Nixon but also our only unelected president (i.e. Gerald Ford), Carter rolls into Washington as an outsider who will fix everything. Within two years he's firing most of his cabinet, and two years later he's soundly run out of town by Ronald Reagan as inflation and unemployment skyrocket.


• 1980, 1984 - Ronald Reagan wins big twice. He campaigns as a libertarian - asserting that government is too large and the cause of most of our problems. Once elected, he proves this point by doing nothing substantive to reduce government. But he does succeed in spending the Soviet Union out of existence.


• 1988 - George Bush Sr. wins pretty big. He asks us to read his lips when promising no new taxes. Then he proves his ability to be bipartisan by raising taxes. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union collapses on his watch AND the fact that we won the first Gulf War, he still manages to be a one-termer (the fates are indeed fickle).


• 1992, 1996 - Bill Clinton wins, then wins bigger against the personality-free Bob Dole (who later winds up doing Viagra commercials ... wasn't that disturbing?). He proves he's a "new kind of Democrat" by screwing the labor unions with NAFTA (not a bad thing, but it happened nonetheless), getting us involved in a couple of mini-wars in Bosnia and Somalia, and helping America discuss the exact definition of "sex" (not to mention "is"). Passionately loved and viciously hated, his presidency helped depreciate the level of debate in America to epithets and absurd emails from mysterious people.


• 2000, 2004 - George Bush Jr. wins (barely), then wins again. Where to begin? Can we all just agree this guy was really, really bad regardless of which party you support? Please?

In other words, the majority may have been right twice. Reagan and Clinton at least managed to leave office with a significant group of satisfied supporters and a fair number of people who at least weren't wishing for their deaths. That means - for purposes this unscientific discussion - that 5 of the 7 winners of the presidency managed to leave office with the majority of folks disliking them (to put it mildly) after having been elected by --- tah dah!! -- a majority of the folks. The fickle whims of the uninformed electorate underscore how little thought most people actually put into voting.

So how do we save liberty? As H.L. Mencken once observed:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

In other words, politics is all about raising expectations. We've got be the ones to help people clearly formulate what their expectations are. Then we wait. At some point in the future, we should try to help them see how their expectations have not been met. We need to nurture their disappointment ... and THEN apply the wedge of skepticism (i.e. when they "feel" that something is wrong, use facts and reason to help them go with that feeling). Believers are naturally gullible. Until their belief is shattered, their minds will be insulated from thought. Thought liberates.

And liberty will only prosper if we get people to think. Relying on their feelings, they'll just swing back and forth between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, the Demopublicans and the Republicrats, and things will only continue to get worse.