This op-ed below, from a conservative Republican, is one of the most elitist (and ageist) articles I've read in some time. I mean, Republicans are supposed to be the defenders of Joe Sixpack, Joe the Plumber and "flyover country," while liberals are supposed to be snobby coastal elitists. Go figure. Nothing like an election to bring out a man's -- or a party's -- true colors.
Without a doubt there are many dumb Americans, on the left and the right. (And when you think about it, it's not exactly as if our two-party system encourages much creative thought or dissent; it's much more about the party faithful coming up with fancy new ways to market two very old and worn-out products.) Yet when it comes to politics, even smart people can be abysmally stupid. By "smart," I mean educated people who have experience, skills and knowledge that I will never have. A lot of smart Americans continue to believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, for example. Whereas most "dumb" (read: under-educated) blacks never bought into the rationale for invading Iraq, and are overwhelmingly against the war to this day. Turns out they are politically much savvier than the rest of America. Again, go figure.
So, accepting the above, and realizing that the right to vote is the most important right we've got, then by gum I want every eligible "idiot" in America to vote, and let the chips fall where they may. (The root of "idiot," by the way, means somebody who is rough, crude, or unrefined.) After all, it's their (your?) country too. And indeed, it might just be the idiots who save us from the smarty-pants who come up with brilliant, expensive ideas like invading and occupying Middle Eastern countries without provocation, and giving $700 billion bailouts to greedy coastal elitist bastards who knew better.
Also, consider this: common law requires convening, by force, a jury of your peers (read: a group of idiots) who are granted the legal power to take away your money, your freedom, even your life. We hail that principle as one of the great achievements of democracy and rule of law. Yet when it comes to our elections, our system makes it downright inconvenient for common idiots to cast a ballot. In fact, hundreds of thousands of registered voters can be deleted from the rolls within 90 days of the election, a clear violation of federal law, and our MSM and political elites say nothing. But in which case is the common man's vote more consequential, the 1 out of 12 life-or-death vote in a jury, or the 1 out of 100,000,000 vote in a national election where the popular vote doesn't even elect the president? Then why such outsized fear of "one man, one vote" in one little election? In fact, this is a very old and very elitist fear: our uber-"smart" Founding Fathers constantly fretted about the deplorable possibility of "mobocracy," hence they restricted the right to vote to white land-owning men, and established the Electoral College.
Finally, Jonah Goldberg's benefactor, National Review, spent a heck of a lot more time examining Obama's pastor and past associates than it did his policy proposals. Why? Because conservative elites correctly figured it better served their purposes to selectively inform their party faithful, in order to stir up their worst fears and passions with all kinds of half-truths, rumors, and fabrications. Media outlets like NRO, Human Events, Townhall, FOXNews, and right-wing talk radio did a horrible job of informing the electorate. (To put it more accurately, they did a great job of dis-informing them.) Over the past 21 months, rarely could they be bothered to talk about anything except Rev. Wright, Randy Ayers, Tony Rezko, Obama's "Marxist" mother, his "Muslim" grade school, his "terrorist" college roommates, his "missing" birth certificate, and the like. This pharisaic elitist Jonah Goldberg should remove the beam from his own MSM eye first.
By Jonah Goldberg
November 6, 2008 | USA Today
No doubt everyone is relieved to have the election behind us, even if some of us are less than ecstatic about its result. The president-elect and Democrats in Congress very much want to move forward, talk about the future and get busy on their agenda. After all, the oceans aren't going to stop rising on their own.
Of course, how we move "forward" (quotation marks are necessary because one man's forward is another man's backward) depends very much on how we view the larger meaning of the election. Was this a vote for radical leftwingery or a vote for moderation? Is the electorate pro-liberal or merely anti-Republican? What did voters have in mind? What do they expect?
The nice thing about such questions is that you actually get real debate about them, and we'll be hearing lots of that in the weeks and months ahead. But there are other questions no one ever asks, in part because our political discourse is choked with stupefying clichés and gassy assumptions about what matters and what doesn't.
So while the election is still fresh in our minds, let us look at some of the goofy assumptions and buzzwords that defined so much of the coverage discussion this year.
Ever since the primaries, Democrats have been promising to be "agents of change" (which kind of sounds like a brand of James Bond villain; watch out -- he's an agent of C*H*A*N*G*E). It's a weird quirk of our television-soaked culture that we think change is a good in and of itself. The phrase "change the channel" is a ubiquitous explanation for voters' desire to be done with President Bush. Fair enough, but change has no moral content. Winning the lottery is change, and so is catching a ball peen hammer to the bridge of your nose. The desire for change for change's sake is the stuff of children and attention-deficit disorder.
Speaking of children, the national obsession with the "youth vote" is one of the great embarrassments of deliberative democracy. Why is the participation of youth so vital? According to "youth activists" themselves, it's because they bring so much "passion" to politics. Passion, again, is not necessarily a good thing. Mobs and small children are passionate. There was a time when voting was supposed to be a matter for sober, mature reflection. Now it's more like a fashion statement. "In America," remarked Oscar Wilde long ago, "the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." The only difference now is they get to vote.
In fact, everyone gets to vote, or at least that's the hope of vote-voluptuaries. The country is experimenting with ever-more-novel ways to make it easier for people to join "the process," which makes democracy sound like a digestive phenomenon. Gone entirely is the tradition of Election Day. Now it's Election Week or even Election Month in some states. Voting by mail, online voting, even voting by phone are increasingly in vogue, all because it's assumed that we desperately need input from voters who couldn't be bothered to get off the couch for a normal Election Day but can be coaxed to vote if it doesn't interfere too much with their video game schedule. In Arizona, there was an aggressive movement to make voting into a lottery, where casting a ballot could also lead to a big payday. The logic seemed to be that having the same folks who hang out at the local liquor store or keno parlor move their action to the polling station would enrich our democracy.
Of course, helping the infirm, the handicapped or soldiers overseas cast ballots makes sense. But do we really think the outcomes will be improved if we triple the turnout of the lazy and uninformed?
Apparently, the answer is yes, particularly judging by the virtual deification of "undecided" voters this year. I understand why campaigns care so much about the undecided voter in the last days of the election: They're kingmakers of a sort. But the press lionizes these people as geniuses and, judging from some of the focus groups we've been subjected to, these proudly indecisive and lazy voters actually believe all their good press.
After each debate, some network would convene a focus group of undecided voters who then preened over their lofty status. Pollster Frank Luntz, CNN's Soledad O'Brien or some other enabler would gush over how fascinating it was to talk to "real people." Indeed, so exotic are these creatures, most of the journalists actually observed them from the other side of a two-way mirror, like visitors to the "Earthling Exhibit" on some alien planet in that old episode of "The Twilight Zone." During the debates, the creatures were monitored every second, their instant reactions to the candidates' every vowel and burp were charted, often in real time, for the rest of us to decipher and applaud. Invariably, they shook their heads, more in sadness than anger, and complained they didn't get enough "specifics," as if presidential debates are the proper source of basic campaign information.
And that proves the point. These people are undecided because they don't do their homework. CNN profiled an undecided voter from Nebraska the day before the election who said he is "definitely pro-life" and a single-issue voter on abortion. But, according to CNN, he was still trying to figure out which candidate was pro-life. Um, really? Don't strain yourself trying to figure that one out.
No comments:
Post a Comment