In November 2008, only 63.6 percent of eligible Americans voted in the presidential election. This is one of the highest numbers in the past 50 years, but still, it indicates that a significant portion of the voting-aged population – over 1/3rd, chose not to vote.
Why not? Why didn’t people care enough to vote?
Let’s examine.
When a large group of people begin exhibiting the
same negative behaviors, we usually call this an illness.
Illnesses are caused by foreign or atypical
attackers.
If those foreign predators are unconsciously
driven by instinct, we say that their effects are coincidences. But
if they are motivated by a conscious purpose, then they are called
conspirators.
I submit that our nation’s apathy toward voting
and political involvement is the intended consequence of
conspiratorial action by the few people who are really in charge of
our country.
Here are the three methods they use to trick us
into not voting:
1) Our scripted and censored media shows us the worst possible side of politics.
Our media disseminates scandalous and despicable
stories of reprehensible actions, inactions, lies, briberys,
fellatios . . .
These stories prey on our weakness for gossip and
rubbernecking. But they also do something much more maleficent. They
undermine the confidence we have in our “trusted servants” and
present the problem in such a way that it seems systemic and
unavoidable. We start to believe that politics is inherently a dirty
business and we are better off when we have nothing to do with it.
2) Our political ideology is basically forced into one of two categories.
At election time in America, if you want your vote
to have any meaning at all (or in many places, if you want to vote
period), then you have to decide if you want to be a Democrat or a
Republican.
Sure, there are other parties, but almost all of
the political attention is focused on getting us to categorize
ourselves into one of the two major groups. And this is intentional.
When we start finding differences between our personal
ideology and the ones touted by each group, we begin to feel left
out. There seems to be no place for us in the political
discourse.
And if there is no place for us, we stop caring.
And then, we stop voting.
But why does it matter so much if the “others”
stop voting? Think about this:
The Class President Example
If you are running for class president, and there
are 100 people in your class, you will need 51 votes to win, if
everyone votes.
However, let’s say you can convince the students
that there are really only two sides to be on – the red side and
the blue side. Red side is in favor of longer recess but shorter
lunch, and Blue side wants longer lunch but shorter recess.
What happens next is that all of the students who
think different things are important, for example, starting earlier
and ending earlier, or more subjects/shorter classes, will stop
paying attention to the election because it seems irrelevant to their
beliefs. Especially if they never hear of a candidate who believes
similarly to themselves.
So now, let’s say we have a little over a third
of the class who won’t vote because they don’t think their ideas
are relevant.
That brings us down to 60 people. Now to win the
election, you just need 31 votes. It is much easier to get 31 votes
than 51. Hand out some candy, promise a couple of cabinet positions,
blackmail anybody else who isn’t a friend or a blind follower- and
you have won the presidency.
By splitting the electorate into three groups,
those who support you, those you oppose you, and those who feel
uninterested, you actually make it easier for yourself to get
elected.
In this example, you also shifted the focus of the
election to only one or two key issues, which brings me to my last
point:
3) Our politicians convince us that some issues are just too complicated for us to understand.
Trade. National debt. Foreign policy. Tax code.
I used to think these crucial issues were too
complex and math-ish for me to find interesting. Then one day, I
accidentally discovered NPR’s
Planet Money, and a whole new world opened up. Not only did I
realize that I could understand these essential economic
issues, but I also that I should.
The issues most crucial to our development as a
country are not immigration, abortion, gay marriage, and gun
control. And yet, they are overwhelmingly the most discussed by both
politicians and pundits.
Why? Because they are easy-to-understand,
black-vs.-white distractions.
Politicians want us to think we are having a
political discussion when we talk about these issues, but we really
aren’t. We are having a moral one.
We spend our time on these moral arguments because
we don’t have a solid understanding of the issues that are truly
important to our country’s development. And that is how they want
us to be.
They don’t come right up to you and say, “You
are not smart enough to understand this trade agreement.”
But they do make sure that words like complex,
complicated, nuanced, detailed, and intricate, are attached to every
sound bite related to our tax policies, for example.
This sends a subtle message to us, telling us that
serious study is required for someone to understand certain political
issues. Therefore, the layperson should focus on simpler issues and
use those to figure out who is best suited to run our country.
Meanwhile, the genuinely important political
decisions are being made by someone else.
So, who is that someone else?
Let’s go to the last section of this article:
If there is a conspiracy, who is behind it and what can we do about it?
To be honest, I’m not sure who is responsible
for wanting the rest of us to be politically apathetic. There are all
of the usual suspects, of course: greedy politicians, corporations,
the obscenely wealthy, secret societies, evil puppeteers, …
Any or all of these groups could be responsible.
I’m not one of the elite, neither in terms of power nor wealth. So
I don’t know any of the Illuminati secrets. I really don’t know
who is in charge.
But I do fervently believe two things:
- That the people in charge want us to be apathetic to what they do, and
- that it is definitely, definitely, not in our best interests to be so.
We are the proletariat,
and our only weapon (of attack or defense) comes from our collective
force. When we do not use this weapon, then we will
inevitably be enslaved by those who have more power than we do. It is
naive and foolish to believe that those who control us do so
unintentionally.
So how do we use this collective weapon?
We have to come at the problem from two sides. As
individuals, we have to educate ourselves on the real issues and we
have to actually go vote.
As a society, we must, must, must, evolve from the
two party system. When we feel like we are forced to pick the lesser
of two evils, most of us decide that the best thing to do is not pick
at all. To be successful at this, we all need to find and vote for
third party candidates.
A lot of people say that voting for someone who
isn’t in one of the major parties is a wasting your vote,
presumably because that person has no shot of winning the election.
But we have to think about the long game. Once a party starts getting
votes, it starts getting attention, which equals more votes, and even
more attention. In just a few election cycles, 3% can become 33%. We
have the power to create a new major party.