In the weeks following Trump's election, Evan McMullin, in an interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, suggested that the Left and the Right (the part of the Right that cares about the Constitution) should unite and articulate what the Constitution means to them.
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (and, by extension, France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, though it isn't ours) articulate a vision for a society under a government that is responsible both to and for its people. It is my personal understanding that the founding documents have transcended the limitations of their authors, and are, by necessity, through advancing technology and demographic shifts, expanded to include, instead of just "all men are created equal" to "all human beings are created equal."
This is extremely important because we cannot have a society that is so proud of itself for being a model for a free and democratic republic that is at the same time is actively--or even passively--oppressing certain groups within its population. It cannot be more necessary to, in order to believe authentically and assert on the world stage that the United States is an ideal democracy, treat every citizen--regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, or any other yet unknown identifier--with dignity and respect under the law.
I further believe that the Preamble of the Constitution gives the government the responsibility to advocate for the good of the people and their resources. The government thus has a responsibility to ensure that people have access to healthcare, that natural resources are protected, that citizens receive adequate education, that citizens are being treated fairly in their work, and that citizens who cannot work or take care of themselves are properly looked after. The government also has a responsibility to regulate and safeguard the economy to minimize calamity caused by financial malfeasance, and to protect citizens from the oppression of monopolies.
The United States government is intended to be a government By the People and For the People, and therefore is a direct reflection of our values and our community. We have decided as a country that it is important to have clean air and water; that it is important to receive a decent education; that it is important that those much less fortunate than us are not subjected to squalor and debasement; that we have fair choice of commodities; that our economy should be stable, with opportunity for all citizens; and that all citizens are entitled to affordable healthcare. Additionally, it is important that our government behaves rationally and consistently in safeguarding our resources for future generations, and reacts appropriately to developments in science and technology.
Our rights come not from God or even the government itself; the government cannot revoke our rights because the government did not grant those rights. Our rights come to us through the very fact of our humanity: We have rights solely by virtue of the fact that we are human beings; these rights depend neither on God nor government. Our rights exist a priori, and no one--neither Donald Trump nor anyone else--can take them away from us.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Monday, November 28, 2016
"Land of the Free" No Longer
It has been a few weeks since Donald Trump, whom I lambasted as a dangerous cartoon, won the 2016 Presidential Election. I have finally decided that I had better say something before I can't anymore.
Today, one of my students was doing a paper comparing the US Declaration of Independence with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and I couldn't help thinking about what we are going to lose on January 20th, 2017. A long, long, tradition of political and scientific thought culminated in the creation of the United States government and its representative democracy that we have enjoyed and cherished (well, I have, anyway) for 240+ years.
Benjamin Franklin's remark, "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," is less a joke than a warning that we have not heeded.
For 18 months, we have watched now (*grimace*) President-Elect Trump threaten the pillars of our society, and sweep the Republican primaries like a terrifying wildfire. He and his surrogates have since used the Japanese internment camps as a basis for a Muslim registry; promised to pull out of both the Paris climate accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal, and have also threatened to destabilize NATO. And that its only the beginning. He is also appointing known bigots to important cabinet posts and advisory positions, and his new head of the EPA accelerates climate catastrophe. His Secretary of Education is an advocate for school vouchers, has connections to the Christian right, and her main draw for Trump is that her family donated $9.5 million to his campaign. On top of all of that, it gets worse: The NYTimes has published two days ago a full expose of the enormous web of private ventures that threaten to jeopardize his fealty to the country and citizens he will swear to serve. Oh yeah, and say goodbye to Net Neutrality. (Did I cover everything so far? Deep breath!)
As President-Elect, Donald Trump has recently claimed on Twitter that "millions of people voted illegally." In fact, Trump has gone after the NYTimes, protesters, the ballot, and the cast of Hamilton with his Twitter account. Next year, he will be launching personal attacks from @POTUS, and, if he is so inclined, he will have the full force of the executive branch of the federal government at his disposal. Plus the nuclear codes. What happens,in 2020, if Trump decides, "Hey, I'm President. What do we need another election for?" Who is going to stand up to him?
Foreign Policy had an excellent article that detailed what we should be looking out for to see if our democracy is actually being eroded, and there is one part that I would like to discuss in detail. Donald Trump is likely to run the country "like a business," but few people know what that is going to mean until it is too late. Donald likes to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and with the FBI having inserted itself into the election, it is likely that public institutions that citizens previously expected to behave the same toward everyone regardless of political or economic standing, are going to play favorites in a way that will be devastating to public confidence and the integrity of our institutions. One such example will be CNN.
There is an AT&T-Time Warner merger in the works. Bernie Sanders said "This merger represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good and should be blocked." Trump, however, hates CNN, but might be willing to trade a green light for the merger in return for positive coverage. As Hamilton Nolan put it in his Deadspin article, "So if you are a CNN journalist, ask yourself: Do you believe that the CEOs of Time Warner and AT&T value your editorial integrity more than they value this $85 billion merger?" This is how democracy withers away and dies.
So, what happened? Trump won with about 27% of the total electorate, with less than the number of voters than Mitt Romney in 2012. The fact that Clinton lost by less than a percentage point in battleground states means that about 50% of the electorate actually turned up to vote. This is not unusual in recent elections, but it should alarm people simply for the fact that a democracy depends on participation, and if the people in whose interests policies are being proposed and decided do not vote, well...Donald Trump happens.
I have a sinking feeling that the demographic that brought us the Tea Party in 2010 gave us Trump in 2016: Undereducated white people living in the south and midwest. He's promising many of the same things. The problem is that this is twice now they've traded medicare and collective bargaining for racial animus. At one point during the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders said something prescient: He explained at one of his rallies how people like Donald Trump use racism to divide and conquer: To simultaneously disenfranchise poor whites and at the same time keep them complacent by comparing them to minorities who are even more oppressed. We can expect racism to be catharsis for accelerated income inequality. As soon as it was announced that Donald Trump won the election, reports of violence toward minority populations skyrocketed. The GOP built a coalition of smoke and mirrors for 40 years, and there is no reason why we should expect any different for the next 40 years. Elections have consequences.
Furthermore, the proliferation of fake news sites and conspiracy theories makes it even harder to inform the public, especially as supposedly progressive Democratic voters switch sides or vote for a third party over false and bizarre stories. In order to maintain a democratic society, we must maintain a shared reality, and as fake news sites and previously pro-democratic organizations such as Wikileaks actively work toward trampling democracy in the United States, we are not going to be able to trust anyone.
In fact, the Internet itself has become an instrument of de-democratization. It isn't just that social media is insulating, but that anyone can write anything and that people will believe it. There are few effective ways for society to counteract the corrosive influence of fake news and conspiracy theories, and even fewer for those who are likely to fall into the trap. Belief in conspiracy theories, I have discovered, are a kind of mental illness in that they are nearly impossible to counteract with reason and logic; "No, Clinton does not have Parkinson's." "Well, you're trusting the mainstream media!" The critical thought process completely breaks down, and very likely the person will move deeper into the rabbit hole, reading Breitbart and watching Alex Jones and Ancient Aliens. I thought the 9/11 Truthers were bad. In the 90s, aliens were a fun diversion. But now there are conspiracy theories about nearly everything, and our ability to communicate with one another as a democratic society is severely compromised, and is likely to get worse. (One silver lining about Trump getting elected is that any world body like the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group or the John Birch Society or what have you, would have never permitted Trump to get elected because they would value order and stability, so we can safely conclude once and for all that these do not exist.)
Unless a miracle happens, Trump will be the 45th (and very possibly--probably?--last) President of the United States of America. Part of me thinks that this was inevitable, that if Clinton won in 2016, someone worse would have won in 2020. They would investigate her perpetually. Her entire term would be consumed by wasteful and inept congressional hearings, FBI investigations, and then at the end of it all they would still have nothing. In 2020, someone else, maybe Trump, probably someone worse, would be voted in, toss Clinton in prison without actionable evidence, and then our country would surely be dead, more surely than we are right now.
Today, one of my students was doing a paper comparing the US Declaration of Independence with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and I couldn't help thinking about what we are going to lose on January 20th, 2017. A long, long, tradition of political and scientific thought culminated in the creation of the United States government and its representative democracy that we have enjoyed and cherished (well, I have, anyway) for 240+ years.
Benjamin Franklin's remark, "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," is less a joke than a warning that we have not heeded.
For 18 months, we have watched now (*grimace*) President-Elect Trump threaten the pillars of our society, and sweep the Republican primaries like a terrifying wildfire. He and his surrogates have since used the Japanese internment camps as a basis for a Muslim registry; promised to pull out of both the Paris climate accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal, and have also threatened to destabilize NATO. And that its only the beginning. He is also appointing known bigots to important cabinet posts and advisory positions, and his new head of the EPA accelerates climate catastrophe. His Secretary of Education is an advocate for school vouchers, has connections to the Christian right, and her main draw for Trump is that her family donated $9.5 million to his campaign. On top of all of that, it gets worse: The NYTimes has published two days ago a full expose of the enormous web of private ventures that threaten to jeopardize his fealty to the country and citizens he will swear to serve. Oh yeah, and say goodbye to Net Neutrality. (Did I cover everything so far? Deep breath!)
As President-Elect, Donald Trump has recently claimed on Twitter that "millions of people voted illegally." In fact, Trump has gone after the NYTimes, protesters, the ballot, and the cast of Hamilton with his Twitter account. Next year, he will be launching personal attacks from @POTUS, and, if he is so inclined, he will have the full force of the executive branch of the federal government at his disposal. Plus the nuclear codes. What happens,in 2020, if Trump decides, "Hey, I'm President. What do we need another election for?" Who is going to stand up to him?
Foreign Policy had an excellent article that detailed what we should be looking out for to see if our democracy is actually being eroded, and there is one part that I would like to discuss in detail. Donald Trump is likely to run the country "like a business," but few people know what that is going to mean until it is too late. Donald likes to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and with the FBI having inserted itself into the election, it is likely that public institutions that citizens previously expected to behave the same toward everyone regardless of political or economic standing, are going to play favorites in a way that will be devastating to public confidence and the integrity of our institutions. One such example will be CNN.
There is an AT&T-Time Warner merger in the works. Bernie Sanders said "This merger represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good and should be blocked." Trump, however, hates CNN, but might be willing to trade a green light for the merger in return for positive coverage. As Hamilton Nolan put it in his Deadspin article, "So if you are a CNN journalist, ask yourself: Do you believe that the CEOs of Time Warner and AT&T value your editorial integrity more than they value this $85 billion merger?" This is how democracy withers away and dies.
So, what happened? Trump won with about 27% of the total electorate, with less than the number of voters than Mitt Romney in 2012. The fact that Clinton lost by less than a percentage point in battleground states means that about 50% of the electorate actually turned up to vote. This is not unusual in recent elections, but it should alarm people simply for the fact that a democracy depends on participation, and if the people in whose interests policies are being proposed and decided do not vote, well...Donald Trump happens.
I have a sinking feeling that the demographic that brought us the Tea Party in 2010 gave us Trump in 2016: Undereducated white people living in the south and midwest. He's promising many of the same things. The problem is that this is twice now they've traded medicare and collective bargaining for racial animus. At one point during the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders said something prescient: He explained at one of his rallies how people like Donald Trump use racism to divide and conquer: To simultaneously disenfranchise poor whites and at the same time keep them complacent by comparing them to minorities who are even more oppressed. We can expect racism to be catharsis for accelerated income inequality. As soon as it was announced that Donald Trump won the election, reports of violence toward minority populations skyrocketed. The GOP built a coalition of smoke and mirrors for 40 years, and there is no reason why we should expect any different for the next 40 years. Elections have consequences.
Furthermore, the proliferation of fake news sites and conspiracy theories makes it even harder to inform the public, especially as supposedly progressive Democratic voters switch sides or vote for a third party over false and bizarre stories. In order to maintain a democratic society, we must maintain a shared reality, and as fake news sites and previously pro-democratic organizations such as Wikileaks actively work toward trampling democracy in the United States, we are not going to be able to trust anyone.
In fact, the Internet itself has become an instrument of de-democratization. It isn't just that social media is insulating, but that anyone can write anything and that people will believe it. There are few effective ways for society to counteract the corrosive influence of fake news and conspiracy theories, and even fewer for those who are likely to fall into the trap. Belief in conspiracy theories, I have discovered, are a kind of mental illness in that they are nearly impossible to counteract with reason and logic; "No, Clinton does not have Parkinson's." "Well, you're trusting the mainstream media!" The critical thought process completely breaks down, and very likely the person will move deeper into the rabbit hole, reading Breitbart and watching Alex Jones and Ancient Aliens. I thought the 9/11 Truthers were bad. In the 90s, aliens were a fun diversion. But now there are conspiracy theories about nearly everything, and our ability to communicate with one another as a democratic society is severely compromised, and is likely to get worse. (One silver lining about Trump getting elected is that any world body like the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group or the John Birch Society or what have you, would have never permitted Trump to get elected because they would value order and stability, so we can safely conclude once and for all that these do not exist.)
Unless a miracle happens, Trump will be the 45th (and very possibly--probably?--last) President of the United States of America. Part of me thinks that this was inevitable, that if Clinton won in 2016, someone worse would have won in 2020. They would investigate her perpetually. Her entire term would be consumed by wasteful and inept congressional hearings, FBI investigations, and then at the end of it all they would still have nothing. In 2020, someone else, maybe Trump, probably someone worse, would be voted in, toss Clinton in prison without actionable evidence, and then our country would surely be dead, more surely than we are right now.
RIP United States of America.
July 4, 1776 - January 20, 2017
July 4, 1776 - January 20, 2017
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Kentucky Route Zero is a Magical Experience
From the opening moment, as Conway pulls up to the Equus Oils gas station, one gets the sense that Kentucky Route Zero (KR0/KRZ) is not going to be like any other adventure game. KR0 is a more malevolent version of Haruki Murakami, building an American folklore all its own.
KR0 is not a traditional adventure game; in fact, I don't really think it's a "game" at all. There are no puzzles, very little exploration, and the only thing that the player is really doing is choosing dialogue options along the way. The player--the one "controlling" the story--is more or less along for the ride, an audience to what is one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful, and unsettling adventure games (term used VERY loosely) ever made.
Kentucky Route Zero, developed by Cardboard Computer, first began in January of 2013, and as of July 2016, is currently on Act 4 of five. The 4th episode took 2 whole years to come out, and I replayed the entire game on the night it came out. I feel the game gnawing at my mind the same way Serial Experiments Lain did, and I feel inspired to write about what makes it so interesting.
KR0 starts with an antiques delivery driver named Conway stopping for gas at Equus Oils. It's his last delivery before he retires, and he's supposed to deliver to someone on Dogwood Drive. The gas station attendant, named Joseph, informs him that Dogwood Drive is located along a mysterious highway called the Zero. Joseph then asks Conway to turn the power on via the breaker in the basement as a favor to him.
So, Conway ventures down into the basement of the gas station, and there are...wait what? A group of people playing a board game, set up right in font of the breaker that you need to hit! A glow in the dark die rolls to the floor to the left, they say, but they can't hear Conway and they never acknowledge him. Conway turns his lamp off, finds the die that rolled off the table--and the group entirely DISAPPEARS! Conway, having done the favor to Joseph, goes back upstairs, and asks him about the group playing the board game in the dark basement, to no avail. (This is only the first, maybe 2 minutes of the game I'm describing, by the way.) Things sure do get strange, and fast.
What makes KR0 so excellent, beyond the aesthetic and the plot itself, is that it asks the player, beyond controlling movement, to choose characters' responses. This game isn't about being stuck, or even finding pieces of the plot (though, there are a few times later in Act 4 where the player can choose to see certain plot points or not); the game is purely focused on the narrative and the characters. That's it.The joy and beauty of this game is uncovering the mystery of the Zero and illuminating the motivations and histories of the characters through dialogue choices. And I assure you, the dialogue is excellent.
What is also very interesting is that the player's character and perspective frequently shifts, in that the player is making choices for other characters, and at one point in Act 4, what is "current" for the characters is being narrated from a future perspective via surveillance tapes and commentary, at a point, I believe, at least months into the future in terms of the game's timescale, for no other reason (that I could tell) than experimentation. It was a great technique. Beyond that, about halfway through the game, the player's perspective gradually shifts from one character to another, so that the player becomes less sure who the "main character" is. There is a reason for this, but again, "Spoilers!"
Sometimes, it's hard to see where all of this is going, or if it means anything at all. It isn't until Act 4--or, if you are paying attention, Act 2--where certain patterns begin to emerge (unlike Lain, which is 18 years old, I don't want to spoil KR0 because it isn't even finished yet, and I want people to play it for themselves), and after everything the player has seen up to the ending of Act 4, the ending becomes pretty clear (though I'm sure Act 5 will break expectations as much as the previous acts have).
 |
| Our Journey to the Zero Begins |
Plot & Atmosphere
KR0 is not a traditional adventure game; in fact, I don't really think it's a "game" at all. There are no puzzles, very little exploration, and the only thing that the player is really doing is choosing dialogue options along the way. The player--the one "controlling" the story--is more or less along for the ride, an audience to what is one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful, and unsettling adventure games (term used VERY loosely) ever made.
Kentucky Route Zero, developed by Cardboard Computer, first began in January of 2013, and as of July 2016, is currently on Act 4 of five. The 4th episode took 2 whole years to come out, and I replayed the entire game on the night it came out. I feel the game gnawing at my mind the same way Serial Experiments Lain did, and I feel inspired to write about what makes it so interesting.
KR0 starts with an antiques delivery driver named Conway stopping for gas at Equus Oils. It's his last delivery before he retires, and he's supposed to deliver to someone on Dogwood Drive. The gas station attendant, named Joseph, informs him that Dogwood Drive is located along a mysterious highway called the Zero. Joseph then asks Conway to turn the power on via the breaker in the basement as a favor to him.
So, Conway ventures down into the basement of the gas station, and there are...wait what? A group of people playing a board game, set up right in font of the breaker that you need to hit! A glow in the dark die rolls to the floor to the left, they say, but they can't hear Conway and they never acknowledge him. Conway turns his lamp off, finds the die that rolled off the table--and the group entirely DISAPPEARS! Conway, having done the favor to Joseph, goes back upstairs, and asks him about the group playing the board game in the dark basement, to no avail. (This is only the first, maybe 2 minutes of the game I'm describing, by the way.) Things sure do get strange, and fast.
What makes KR0 so excellent, beyond the aesthetic and the plot itself, is that it asks the player, beyond controlling movement, to choose characters' responses. This game isn't about being stuck, or even finding pieces of the plot (though, there are a few times later in Act 4 where the player can choose to see certain plot points or not); the game is purely focused on the narrative and the characters. That's it.The joy and beauty of this game is uncovering the mystery of the Zero and illuminating the motivations and histories of the characters through dialogue choices. And I assure you, the dialogue is excellent.
What is also very interesting is that the player's character and perspective frequently shifts, in that the player is making choices for other characters, and at one point in Act 4, what is "current" for the characters is being narrated from a future perspective via surveillance tapes and commentary, at a point, I believe, at least months into the future in terms of the game's timescale, for no other reason (that I could tell) than experimentation. It was a great technique. Beyond that, about halfway through the game, the player's perspective gradually shifts from one character to another, so that the player becomes less sure who the "main character" is. There is a reason for this, but again, "Spoilers!"
Sometimes, it's hard to see where all of this is going, or if it means anything at all. It isn't until Act 4--or, if you are paying attention, Act 2--where certain patterns begin to emerge (unlike Lain, which is 18 years old, I don't want to spoil KR0 because it isn't even finished yet, and I want people to play it for themselves), and after everything the player has seen up to the ending of Act 4, the ending becomes pretty clear (though I'm sure Act 5 will break expectations as much as the previous acts have).
 |
| Act 3 -- The Lower Depths Bar "Too Late to Love You" |
The Zero
Setting and worldbuilding are crucial to fiction, from Middle Earth to Skyrim to Westeros to MYST. Kentucky Route Zero's highway, the Zero and its mechanics, call to mind the magical realism of Haruki Murakami or Catie Disabato (The Ghost Network). The Zero is weird, and it is one of the most intriguing environments that I have encountered in all of my years of gaming. As the story goes on, the Zero extends from being a bizarre highway in the first three acts to a vast and tumultuous river in the fourth act. Dubbed the "Echo River", it is populated by restaurants, gas stations, and flooded subway tunnels. None of this can physically exist in the "real" world, and instead inhabits its own pocket universe, or "subdimension." I don't even want to post screenshots or describe it in detail because that would ruin the experience. The Zero feels alive, lived in, populated by ordinary people. Like the best fictional worlds, it feels like it could be real, even as it also feels separate in time and space.
What's interesting about the Zero in terms of being an environment in a game is that the player has direct control over Conway's truck in the first three acts, but the fourth act becomes a Choose Your Own Adventure as you choose whether to see a destination or not, as you travel along the Echo River on a tugboat.
What's interesting about the Zero in terms of being an environment in a game is that the player has direct control over Conway's truck in the first three acts, but the fourth act becomes a Choose Your Own Adventure as you choose whether to see a destination or not, as you travel along the Echo River on a tugboat.
 |
| Traveling Along the Echo River |
Rock Paper Shotgun did not particularly like Act 4 compared to previous episodes of the game, but I have to be completely honest: I felt it was the strongest episode. Act 4 focuses almost exclusively on character development, while also containing important plot developments which I cannot spoil.
Conclusion
The game is not finished yet, and I don't expect it to be finished until late next year (Act 4 took 2 years to complete). That said, I implore my readers to play the game at this point. There is enough to see and experience in this bizarre world that I don't think it's much of a problem to wait for Act V. There are people I personally know who definitely need to play Kentucky Route Zero. The game is frequently on sale for 50% off ($12.50), and I highly recommend picking it up when it goes on sale.
I wish that I could say more about what makes this game so special, but alas, I don't want to ruin it when it isn't even finished yet. You'll just have to see for yourself!
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Too Much Faith
Today, Governor Phil Bryant of Mississippi legalized discrimination by signing his state's Religious Freedom Reform Act. He stated that he signed the bill “to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions.” What this means, exactly, is that Gov. Bryant is unequivocally tying religious belief to bigotry and discrimination. Other states, such as North Carolina, Indiana (which I wrote about when it happened), Georgia, and Arizona, were all warned against signing similar laws when companies threatened to leave and damage their economies. After repeated warnings of, "Hey, don't stick a fork in an electrical socket," they did just that.
As we watch Donald Trump's terrifying rise against the placating pundits, "Oh, he won't last," "He'll drop out." "There's no way he'll win," and so on (I warned in November and December that they had to kill his campaign before February--the first primaries--and everyone around me, ostensibly trying to calm me down, said he would be gone by then. Man, I hate being right), I realized that the American people take their political system for granted. We worship the Constitution and its authors as almost demigods (even as some of them--namely, Thomas Jefferson--are tossed down the memory hole in school textbooks), despite the fact that they left us a government that has become exploitable and unable to solve even the most basic problems.
The American electorate holds two contradictory viewpoints:
1) Things are bad
2) Things cannot get so bad that we lose our democracy.
As we watch Donald Trump's terrifying rise against the placating pundits, "Oh, he won't last," "He'll drop out." "There's no way he'll win," and so on (I warned in November and December that they had to kill his campaign before February--the first primaries--and everyone around me, ostensibly trying to calm me down, said he would be gone by then. Man, I hate being right), I realized that the American people take their political system for granted. We worship the Constitution and its authors as almost demigods (even as some of them--namely, Thomas Jefferson--are tossed down the memory hole in school textbooks), despite the fact that they left us a government that has become exploitable and unable to solve even the most basic problems.
The American electorate holds two contradictory viewpoints:
1) Things are bad
2) Things cannot get so bad that we lose our democracy.
1: They are
2: They can
The irony in the belief that things cannot possibly get so bad is that people end up becoming complacent, and allowing--through inaction or negligence (through this belief itself)--things to get that bad.
2: They can
The irony in the belief that things cannot possibly get so bad is that people end up becoming complacent, and allowing--through inaction or negligence (through this belief itself)--things to get that bad.
Voting, by itself, is necessary but insufficient. It is impossible for the average person to be engaged in every issue, and legislative procedures are insufferably boring, but average Americans should do it, because not only is it the only real contact the People have with their government (short of paying taxes or being arrested), it is also the only contact they have in which they can express their opinions to their government (short of being disgustingly wealthy and pumping dark money via Panama into an enormous and nebulous network of underground SuperPACs).
Insofar as the American electorate is functionally and authentically alienated from its government, the government is being exploited (Zephyr Teachout, in her excellent book, Corruption in America, used the term "plundered"), and, of course, it does not have a defense mechanism. It is nothing more than a computer program reading instructions:
Votes (or money) supporting one or other policy go in, legislation goes out. It doesn't matter where the instructions come from, whether the Native Americans in Nevada go to the ballot, or Sheldon Adelson's massive bank account filled with misbegotten cash fills their pockets, the legislation acts on whatever it's given.
Worse, it is nigh impossible to compel the government to fix itself. Campaign Finance Reform would be nothing short of a Ragnarok, the ultimate Class War. Despite the fact that even legislators themselves hate asking for money, they have not been able to pass even the smallest legislation to help alleviate the issue (again, John Oliver on Congressional Fundraising). Why might this be? Because liberating them from the incessant need for outside cash injections also liberates them from the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, who desperately need them (the Koch brothers plan to pump $889 million into the general election). It is worth noting that one of the arguments against voting for Bernie Sanders is that he won't be willing to raise money for down-ticket Democrats if he's elected. Passing CFR would eliminate this.
In the beginning, both legislators and the People were always on the alert for corruption. Zephyr Teachout begins her book with a story about Benjamin Franklin rejecting an adorned snuffbox given to him as a gift of good will by France, because he believed that he would then appear beholden to France against the will of his constituents. As time went on, specifically, after Citizen's United, as well as the legalization of corporate lobbying, our government--continuing the computer metaphor--caught multiple, severe viruses, which give it bad instructions. Things are now so bad--the instructions so jumbled and malicious--to the point where it boots up, but freezes when trying to load a program.
The cacophony of instructions being loaded into the government-computer have ground it to a complete halt. Often, what does get passed, is so awful that the people can hardly believe it. (How the ACA got passed is nothing short of miraculous.)
The primary purpose of a democratic government is to advocate on behalf of the people it serves. Unfortunately, save for the actual casting of votes during elections, the voters themselves are not the ones who influence decisions on the floors of the legislature, and as John Oliver explains, members of Congress only contact those who contribute at least $1,000 to their political campaigns. As he further points out, those who can afford to contribute $1,000 (or more) to a political campaign are not the kinds of people affected by, say, police brutality, contaminated water supplies, or workplace discrimination. Whose interests do our legislators have in mind when they sit on a committee for financial regulations?
Considering the massive train derailment that our government has become (not unlike the scene in Emile Zola's The Beast Within), it is no wonder that, in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Presidential Election 2016, it is not impossible for "the process" (hey, everything else about our government is completely FUBAR, how could our elections emerge unscathed?) to fail to filter out something like Donald Trump, or fail--without pressure from corporations with lucrative jobs in the state on the line (great, so corporate power saves the day, just what we need...)--to stop discriminatory and self-destructive laws from being passed.
Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here in 1935, which was about a dictatorship arising organically within the United States in the middle of the Great Depression. In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy held the second American Inquisition, the Senate Committee on Government Operations, modeled after the 1938 House Unamerican Affairs Committee (the first American Inquisition; I had mistakenly believed that he was part of the HUAC), at which, it should be noted, Ayn Rand testified for the committee. There is no reason to believe that Joseph McCarthy could not happen again, and Trump's ascent to the Republican nomination would be nothing less than the coup de grace upon the pile of rubble our government has become.
The point is that, in writing the Constitution and forming the government, the founders left some major things missing, things that, because of their experiences in Europe, they absolutely should have seen coming. However, Jacobin points out that the founders were all rich, educated, white men, which means (at least, according to that article) that they could have purposefully overlooked the pitfalls of constantly hounding for political campaign contributions in order to influence later policy decisions through campaign contributions. Or, another possibility might be that it didn't cost both legs and an arm to run for political office in the 18th century. On the other, other hand (how many hands do we have? Am I the xenomorph queen?), they were chiefly concerned with the fidelity of the government to the people, and their omission of this important aspect of government construction is simply unknown (my dad likes to say that they considered politics a dirty business and that no one wants to do it, but because it's dirty, there are certain kinds of people who want to do it: those we don't want to do it).
Blind faith in our government's ability to withstand all attacks to its integrity will render the People docile and complacent, and the very things that the voters believe impossible will--to their horror--be made manifest.
Insofar as the American electorate is functionally and authentically alienated from its government, the government is being exploited (Zephyr Teachout, in her excellent book, Corruption in America, used the term "plundered"), and, of course, it does not have a defense mechanism. It is nothing more than a computer program reading instructions:
Votes (or money) supporting one or other policy go in, legislation goes out. It doesn't matter where the instructions come from, whether the Native Americans in Nevada go to the ballot, or Sheldon Adelson's massive bank account filled with misbegotten cash fills their pockets, the legislation acts on whatever it's given.
Worse, it is nigh impossible to compel the government to fix itself. Campaign Finance Reform would be nothing short of a Ragnarok, the ultimate Class War. Despite the fact that even legislators themselves hate asking for money, they have not been able to pass even the smallest legislation to help alleviate the issue (again, John Oliver on Congressional Fundraising). Why might this be? Because liberating them from the incessant need for outside cash injections also liberates them from the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, who desperately need them (the Koch brothers plan to pump $889 million into the general election). It is worth noting that one of the arguments against voting for Bernie Sanders is that he won't be willing to raise money for down-ticket Democrats if he's elected. Passing CFR would eliminate this.
In the beginning, both legislators and the People were always on the alert for corruption. Zephyr Teachout begins her book with a story about Benjamin Franklin rejecting an adorned snuffbox given to him as a gift of good will by France, because he believed that he would then appear beholden to France against the will of his constituents. As time went on, specifically, after Citizen's United, as well as the legalization of corporate lobbying, our government--continuing the computer metaphor--caught multiple, severe viruses, which give it bad instructions. Things are now so bad--the instructions so jumbled and malicious--to the point where it boots up, but freezes when trying to load a program.
The cacophony of instructions being loaded into the government-computer have ground it to a complete halt. Often, what does get passed, is so awful that the people can hardly believe it. (How the ACA got passed is nothing short of miraculous.)
The primary purpose of a democratic government is to advocate on behalf of the people it serves. Unfortunately, save for the actual casting of votes during elections, the voters themselves are not the ones who influence decisions on the floors of the legislature, and as John Oliver explains, members of Congress only contact those who contribute at least $1,000 to their political campaigns. As he further points out, those who can afford to contribute $1,000 (or more) to a political campaign are not the kinds of people affected by, say, police brutality, contaminated water supplies, or workplace discrimination. Whose interests do our legislators have in mind when they sit on a committee for financial regulations?
Considering the massive train derailment that our government has become (not unlike the scene in Emile Zola's The Beast Within), it is no wonder that, in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Presidential Election 2016, it is not impossible for "the process" (hey, everything else about our government is completely FUBAR, how could our elections emerge unscathed?) to fail to filter out something like Donald Trump, or fail--without pressure from corporations with lucrative jobs in the state on the line (great, so corporate power saves the day, just what we need...)--to stop discriminatory and self-destructive laws from being passed.
Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here in 1935, which was about a dictatorship arising organically within the United States in the middle of the Great Depression. In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy held the second American Inquisition, the Senate Committee on Government Operations, modeled after the 1938 House Unamerican Affairs Committee (the first American Inquisition; I had mistakenly believed that he was part of the HUAC), at which, it should be noted, Ayn Rand testified for the committee. There is no reason to believe that Joseph McCarthy could not happen again, and Trump's ascent to the Republican nomination would be nothing less than the coup de grace upon the pile of rubble our government has become.
The point is that, in writing the Constitution and forming the government, the founders left some major things missing, things that, because of their experiences in Europe, they absolutely should have seen coming. However, Jacobin points out that the founders were all rich, educated, white men, which means (at least, according to that article) that they could have purposefully overlooked the pitfalls of constantly hounding for political campaign contributions in order to influence later policy decisions through campaign contributions. Or, another possibility might be that it didn't cost both legs and an arm to run for political office in the 18th century. On the other, other hand (how many hands do we have? Am I the xenomorph queen?), they were chiefly concerned with the fidelity of the government to the people, and their omission of this important aspect of government construction is simply unknown (my dad likes to say that they considered politics a dirty business and that no one wants to do it, but because it's dirty, there are certain kinds of people who want to do it: those we don't want to do it).
Blind faith in our government's ability to withstand all attacks to its integrity will render the People docile and complacent, and the very things that the voters believe impossible will--to their horror--be made manifest.
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