WHY I AM A POLITICAL NIHILIST
My background: raised in Alabama in the post-CR era, two degrees in political science, specializing in 20th century institutions and political culture as they apply to the politics of the American South.
Democracy is a pretty blunt instrument in the American context. Most of the time, you’re basically voting thumbs up or down on the incumbent; when there’s an open seat, you might have more of a choice, but almost every time you vote for Congress, it’s either throw the bum out or keep him. You can vote for a third-party candidate, if you feel like wasting your vote (and it’s even more stupid in a Presidential race) – no effective third-party candidate has ever emerged in the last hundred years except as a split from one of the major parties (TR) or as the result of hardcore regional support (Wallace). And all they succeeded in doing was throwing the election to the opponent of the group they split from before eventually joining the winner’s party.
I threw the major parties under the bus after 1988, and again after 2002. In both cases it was for the same reasons: the GOP was running as the party of the Deep South, both in policy and in style, and the Democrats were unwilling and/or unable to formulate or articulate a response. The only thing more disgusting than a party who paints a triple-amputee veteran as weak on defense is a party unable to effectively punch back against such a cartoonish argument.
Really, when I step into the booth, who else is there? A plurality of the country won’t even show up. Of those who do, half of them have paid far more attention to Dancing With The Stars than actual events. The other half are basically zombies, who will do whatever the New Media tells them to do, because the blogs and talk shows and cable tell them exactly what they want to hear, how bright and smart and patriotic they are and how much better they are than those wrong, evil, horrible things on the other side of the debate.
There’s no fix, either. You’d need a more informative class of media, interested in more than just entertaining and dodging accusations of bias. You’d need political parties capable of making their case and acknowledging that they might not be in their current position forever. And to be honest, you’d need voters smart enough to count past ten without undressing. Any of these is unlikely. To get all of them is impossible.
So I show up and do my part, but I know it doesn’t mean anything. In the end, the American public gets precisely the government it deserves…and I’m just stuck with it.