The Election Illusion
Dunkirk NY – It’s Election Day, and this is a “dogcatcher” year for elections, meaning there are only local candidates for local positions to city council, county executive, and the like. I will probably make my way to the polls, but over the years I must confess I have become more and more apathetic about voting.
I have become pretty much apolitical, largely because I do not believe that elected officials in this country have any more independence. Given the large amounts of cash that passes hands during campaigns, no one gets elected to any public office these days without being beholden to somebody. I never feel as if I’m voting for someone who will be in a position to take an independent stand on the issues.
I also believe that the people who actually run this country are not the politicians. It’s an illusion that politicians have any power at all. The real power lies in corporations. One only need look at the TARP bailout to see how that works, where corporations get more protection than a single mother trying to raise a family and make a living. And nobody votes for these people. They can just help themselves to $800 billion in corporate welfare from the federal government by claiming they are “too big to fail,” and then have the last laugh on everyone as they hand out their bonuses.
And also, the way campaigns in this country are conducted I just find to be an insult to my intelligence. The shouting, the negative campaigning, the falsification of facts and issues, the fear-mongering that goes on; all these things just make the entire process uninteresting and uninviting. I feel like I’m being asked to participate in a food fight every election year. No thanks.
Voting is one of those great American myths that allow people who actually have power to control the thinking of people who actually don’t have power. Many people believe you can change things if you vote, but eventually it comes down to powerful interests with lots of money who control the power. Voting just makes you a stooge in this process. One need only look at our state government in Albany, the most corrupt in the country, to see this process play out in reality. More than 50 years of voting has done nothing to stem the corruption and concentration of power in New York State. Albany is living proof of the ineffectiveness of the voting process. Yes, the people in New York State are actually that stupid.
My home city of Dunkirk has changed hardly at all in the 21 years I have been living here. It’s still mostly poor, no new businesses have moved in of any significance, no major construction or renovation has taken place, and there is no visible long-range plan promoted by any politician to change this. My local grocery store left the city last year without so much as a whimper from the local politicians. Will my vote get me any change in this status quo? Not likely. I like a good illusion as much as the next person; just don’t ask me to believe that the sleight-of-hand taking place is actually real.
Final thought for today as you contemplate voting? From Paddy Chayefsky, writer of the movie Network:
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
Happy Election Day. -twl
