November 8. After the American election, it's tempting to write a fiery rant calling the voters every name in the English language for lack of intelligence. I'm looking specifically at the initiatives and referendums in my state, Washington. We're a "blue" state that hasn't gone Republican for president since 1984. And yet, voters overwhelmingly rejected taxes and spending: 65-35% to require a nearly impossible two thirds majority of the legislature to raise taxes, 65-35% against an income tax on the very rich, 62-38% to repeal a sin tax on candy and soda, and 55-45% against going into debt to make schools more energy efficient.
And yet, when asked whether the government should stop doing any particular thing, they said no, rejecting two initiatives to get the state out of the liquor business, and one to privatize workers' compensation. Basically the voters have combined the foolishess of the left and right: they want the government to be Santa Claus, but they don't want to pay for it. And here's something even more troubling: by a massive majority, 85-15%, they approved a resolution to allow people not convicted of any crime to be held in prison indefinitely. Of course, the state phrased this as denying bail for violent predators. And yet, voters rejected the income tax on the rich, for fear it would trickle down to everyone, and it never occurred to them that the police state could trickle down to everyone.
It will. The people have decided to use their votes to destroy the only system in which they have votes. Eventually the government will be stripped down to little more than police and prisons, which will enforce the interests of corporations.
My favorite election commentary is by Sharon Astyk: The election is over - Now what do we do with all the fear? I agree: the voters are not really idiots -- they are cowards, and using their human brainpower to convince themselves of fantasies that defy both reason and observation: that the government can dispense benefits without collecting taxes; that an economy based on exponential growth can continue on a planet of fixed size; that we can have utopia merely by filling the slots in the present system with different people. What they're afraid of is reality: that the government, the economy, the planet, cannot continue to give more than they get, that all the stuff we've been getting, we're going to stop getting.
Astyk thinks that eventually the people will be ready for leaders who call for self-sacrifice. I'm not that optimistic. After they lose their toys, the people will be hungry for leaders who call for the sacrifice of others, and I mean sacrifice in the literal sense: the ritual mass-murder of scapegoats. When there are piles of bodies in the streets, only then, from the sane fringes, will new and better systems grow to fill the dead spots. Eventually those systems will become top-heavy and blind, and the whole story will repeat, again and again, until humans either go extinct or become smarter, by which I mean dumber -- less skilled at telling ourselves lies.