Remember the beginning of 2016?
So fresh-faced and hopeful we all were. Maybe, just maybe this would be the year that we got it all right, that we stopped electing the political equivalent of mashed potatoes to office and put a leader in place.
Instead, we went and elected Donald J. Trump to the highest elected office in the land. The Bronzed Ego, an ape in a suit, arguably the Republican answer to Bill Clinton, minus the political savvy.
Oh, I know, you like him and he won. In part however you have to say that he won because the Democrats decided to run the most unlikable candidate in the history of ever. Hillary Clinton couldn't beat political unknown (at the time) Barack Obama and his hope and change rhetoric, and she didn't stand a chance against a man who's literally too stupid to insult.
Wealthy? Yes, off his father's money. But if you believe the tales, and I do, he could have been even wealthier if he'd just invested it all in a Dow Index Fund and taken the return. This is a man who has filed for bankruptcy more times than he's been married. He couldn't hack it in the casino business for chirssakes and those things even made Sheldon Adelson wealthy beyond the dreams of Midas.
Trump is an entertainer, and he entertained his way to the Office of the Presidency because he understands the people who are voting for him. It's also pretty clear that the Democrats, despite their Social Justice Warrior, social-media, blockquoting rants, do not.
Contrary to what you read in Vox, poor voters are not voting against their economic interests by voting Republican. In fact, they're voting more against themselves when they vote Democrat because the party of the Donkey is admitting that they think poor people are too gormless to ever advance in life.
"We're the government and we're here to help" becomes a threat the more you actually deal with government employees. For the most part, they're the people who weren't quite sharp enough to find gainful employment in the private sector, so they took a nice public sector job where they're unlikely to ever be terminated, unless they bring a religious symbol to work, or make a Facebook post not supporting a special accommodation for transgenders when it comes to bathroom access.
America's elected officials are the epitome of the old saying "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". If you can fog a mirror you can lead the bureaucracy, you can even control them. Where the entire ideal of "rule by the elite few" plank of progressive politics falls down is that the true 'elite few' aren't all that interested in controlling the lives of others.
But these people are still in the bureaucracy, and Kafka's invention is designed to not be dismantled all that easily. It is designed to endure, to move along on some perverse auto-pilot like a doomed ship making a sun dive with the American people strapped-in, all but powerless to avert the impact.
"But the vote!" you might say, "We have the power of the vote!"
Do you? Does the poor, single mother of three working four jobs to make ends meet really have the time to investigate each of the candidates on the ballot and make an intelligent choice? Does the father of a "traditional" family, working 5 days a week (and sometimes weekends) really have the time to pour over campaign literature and websites, to analyze policy positions so that he can walk into the ballot box and try not to leave a hanging chad where the most qualified candidate would be?
How about the new voters, the 18 year-olds, happily trundling up to their first voting booths. Do we expect them to have the knowledge needed, to know how to navigate the choppy waters of campaign promises, of hugging babies and kissing women? Given the sorry State of the United States Education System should be expect a High School Senior or a college Freshman to understand macro-economic theory? Hell, Paul Krugman won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in a very limited area of micro-economic theory and even HE doesn't really "get" the American economy.
So, we've created parties. The Democrats and Republicans being the two that currently matter. Sure there's the ever-promised "Libertarian Wave" that gets washed away under a mass of g-string wearing, gyrating flesh at the National convention where the most un-Libertarian ticket in the history of their party was placed on the ballot. And then there are the really fringe groups. The Green Party, who nominated Dr, Jill Stein seemingly because having the honorarium in front of her name brought a sense of class to the joint. Unfortunately, for the Greens, she had to eventually say stuff, and weigh in on policy. This, of course, is where they all went wrong. We haven't even mentioned the Socialists, Communists and the "other" wacko parties. Hell, even Vermin Supreme seemed like a viable option this time around. (I was torn between Chtulu and the Sweet Meteor O' Death to be honest).
Where this all falls down, of course, is that the primary goal of the two major political parties has stopped being "good governance" long ago. It's 100% about power now. About grabbing it, keeping it, and creating possibly the greatest incumbent protection system since Mussolini went West. The Democratic Party exists solely to find and elect Democrats who are willing to prostrate themselves in front of Democratic donors and make pledges of fealty toward their policy. Don't get too smug Republicans, you're exactly the same. Both parties succeed because people are either too busy, too lazy, too stupid, or too desperate to be involved with "something" to call them out on it.
In America we now have three broad groups of people. 1. The so-called 'average' American. We work, we play, we pay taxes and we're too busy trying to keep our heads above water to be outraged about what's going on. A lot of us vote straight-ticket because the "other side" is just horrible. 2. The "activists" who are really just sad, pathetic people who are a) desperate to be acknowledged and b) desperate for a win. These are the people that blog for parties, who stretch any truth to the breaking point in order to support their party's beliefs and who are the one group with whom you never want to find yourself sharing a table with at a dinner party. and 3. The Elite, who are not only elected officials but the check-writers and lobbyists, and courtesans and hangers-on who support them. You can includ politicians in this group, and certain members of the private sector, around 99% of the media, both mainstream and the so-called "alternative" one, and members of the bureaucracy.
And these people DO pay attention, and they understand better than the other two groups exactly what's going on in the world and how the narrative needs to be set. They have money, time and capitol cities in every state (and D.C.) where' they're allowed to cavort in relative solitude without having to deal with group 1, and only occasionally with group 2.
Which is why, despite the election of the Bronzed Ego and the virtual Republican dominance over most of the levers of government, not much is going to change. The people in group 3 know no party, they know show-business, and they're better at it than most of us.
The more things "change".
