We are polled more than an other people on earth, mostly for commercial purposes. We are also asked our opinions on political issues. But those opinions are not important (if so, we’d have national health care). Political polling on issues is merely a means of ascertaining whether or not opinion management techniques are effective.*
It’s easy to wander off into idealistic notions of democracy and get all glassy-eyed about the will of the people, voting and all of that. Roper’s research led him down a different path. He concluded that 90% of Americans are “…politically inert, inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty.”
I wish it were not so, because it rules out self-governance as a viable alternative to rule by the “elite,” or moneyed interests. What then is the point of having elections?
Bertrand Russell struggled with this. He realized that the general public had no opinions worth mining, but at the same time found elections valuable for the simple fact that they force a change of leadership now and then.
But there is a problem in the US with that notion: Because we have privately financed elections, the same money is behind both parties, so that we don’t ever really have a change of leadership. Indeed we get new faces, the true leaders are hidden away. Just like Iran, we have fake presidents while Mullahs pull the string. Iran is a more enlightened democracy in that they recognize that the Mullahs are there. Here we imagine otherwise. Our Mullahs are collectively known as “Wall Street” or “the 1%”, but a better description would be our largest corporations and wealthiest individuals and families. It’s a small percentage of the population with a guiding tool that keeps them mostly focused on their prize: wealth accumulation as political power.
I have noticed in other democratic countries that people are generally better educated than here. But even in those places rule by popular opinion would lead to tragedy. We’re quick to condemn Muslims who get irrational because of some cartoons, but that is the general condition. In our group settings, we are all nuts.
But notice that in France public opinion is against the Afghanistan war, and France will be pulling out. That’s a large issue, and popular will is a general thrust rather than micromanagement of day-to-day affairs. But France is pulling out. Popular will is occasionally heeded there. (Modern parliamentary forms of government are far superior to our own in terms of popular will affecting general policy, but far from perfect.)
But two simple changes in our system of governance would open the door for more enlightened leadership that we sorely lack. Those are public financing of political campaigns, and the elimination of advertising in those campaigns.
It’s not a perfect world, and there are no guaranteed methods of protecting us from our own stupidity. We will continue to stumble along, but cleaning up our political campaigns would at least open the door a crack and let some true public servants in.**
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*It gets worse – elections at the local level can be meaningful, but nationally are used only to give us the illusion of self-governance. People who run for office really want to win, as the spoils are real. But in terms of public opinion, national elections are a joke. They are a means of fostering the illusion that we govern ourselves, as powerless people who know they are powerless often start revolutions. The real threat to our government is not terrorism, but an informed citizenry. The only threat riht now is OWS.
**As I think back through my own lifetime, trying to get a sense of character of the leaders we have had, the “enlightened” ones that I remember are few, Eisenhower perhaps being the best at the presidential level. Even LBJ, who yielded to popular movements to gave us Medicare and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, also gave us Vietnam.
Piece of Mindful 