This wasn’t actually intended as part of the “Responsibilities” series. But it’s related and I had to get it off my chest. So consider it a mini rant within the larger rant, an interlude, or whatever you like.<\/i><\/p>\n
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I have a question for the folks who are always saying we can end tyranny (or corruption or government overspending) by a) keeping an eagle eye on “our” politicians and b) voting the rascals out of office. <\/p>\n
Ready for the question, you advocates of politician-watching? Here goes:<\/p>\n
The governments of your city and your county are as uncorrupt and responsible as government can be, right? You’ve chased all the bad guys out and replaced them with representatives who never break laws or overstep their bounds — true servants of the citizenry. Whatever inclinations they might have toward citizen abuse are curbed either by their integrity or their fear of what You the People will do to them. If the smallest act of abuse or corruption ever raises its head, you and your activist friends are immediately able to whack it down. This is how your local governments are run, right?<\/p>\n
Yes?<\/p>\n
Okay. I don’t seem to be hearing all you voting advocates speak up. So let me try that another way:<\/p>\n
If this thing you’re always recommending — this watchfulness, this voting — worked, you’d already be working it<\/i> in your own political arena, right? You’d have examples to show us. Your YouTube channel would be filled with videos of honest, helpful cops and honest, respectful, law-abiding politicians in action. You’d have Twitter feeds boasting of your clean government — or at least boasting of how terrified of you your local pols are. You’d hold seminars demonstrating how you did it. Freedom seekers by the tens of thousands would flock to your hometown — to live there or just to learn from you.<\/p>\n
I don’t see any of that happening. Why not? If you’re so darned sure the eternal-watch-and-vote method produces honest, responsive government … well, show<\/i> us.<\/p>\n
I’m waiting.<\/p>\n
Still waiting …<\/p>\n
… <\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Um … still out here, guys. Just dying to hear your success stories. Because surely, if your methods work, they’d work first and best in your own hometown where the pols are accessible and the numbers required to influence election results are small.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Okay, I give up. The silence speaks very loudly. So, alas, do the facts.<\/p>\n
It’s certainly true that intense, highly focused, single-issue activism occasionally curbs specific abuses. But the result of the perpetual hyperalertness and hyperactivity some folks advocate is this: We the People get arrested, burn out, become monomaniacs, or die young from the constant state of emotional arousal; government goes on pretty much as ever.<\/p>\n
If you in the (amazingly large) watch-and-vote crowd haven’t gotten together with your friends and cleaned up government’s house at the most local level, how can you possibly believe — let alone preach — that the rest of us should use your recommended tactics to reform everybody from graft-ridden bureaucratic underlings 3,000 miles away to shadowy CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, IRS, ABC-through-XYZ snoops in our backyards? <\/p>\n
Don’t tell me that the failure of your theories is everybody else’s fault<\/i>. Don’t tell me we<\/i> doom your system by our lack of interest in it. Because if what you’re recommending worked, you’d have the track record, enthusiasm, and the intellectual and political ammunition to rouse … maybe not everybody, but the passionate minority who are supposed to make such a difference.<\/p>\n
When you rant that your method is The One, then blame its failure on everybody else, you sound like a Stalinist apparatchik pinning the failure of the latest five-year plan on “wreckers and saboteurs.”<\/p>\n
Face it. If watching-and-voting worked, the advocates of watching-and-voting would be the first ones to make it work. Yet you can’t even alter small-town or county government, can you? You can’t even do it when it’s just a matter of persuading your neighbors.<\/p>\n
So may I respectfully — or what the heck, not so respectfully — suggest (from my 30-year experience as a political activist and devout voter) that you STFU unless you can demonstrate the validity of your theories?<\/p>\n
As for the rest of us, the next time somebody asserts that “we” can end government abuse all by our little votesomes — if we just<\/i> muster the will and go along with the plan, the proper response is: When you’ve done it, come back and show me.<\/p>\n
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