I've been listening to interviews with voters of all persuasion during the past 24 hours. From PBS to the BBC. From CNN to MSNBC. And one clear thought has emerged from this bath of stupidity.
Americans may be too dumb for Democracy.
That is what the Religious Right has tried to promote during the past 30 years and I'm beginning to think they have succeeded wildly. Rationality is diminished. Faith replaces analysis. Complexity is wrapped in hope and glossed over with opinion.
I was particularly struck with the observations of a middle aged man in Colorado who was interviewed on the BBC Tuesday night.
An avowed Republican who both voted for and supported Barack Obama in 2008, he was upset. He "lost" his electronics manufacturing firm in 2000 and it was moved lock stock and barrel "overseas". (It would seem that pocketing a huge check when you sell your company allows you to claim a "loss".) He is very upset it seemed, and his complaint centered around "Obama's failure to enact tariffs that would protect American manufacturing", or "soon there will be no jobs in America".
Tariffs!! A self-avowed Republican who shipped his electronic firm overseas now wants to see tariffs??
He has no idea what Republican means. There is no grounding in economic philosophy, or social responsibility. There is no understanding of Republican history, or the treaties that Republicans have said would make tariffs the kiss of death for business. After all, have Republicans not fought against "protectionism" tooth and nail for decades?
Not according to this business man who now has a water pump plant. He expected Obama to institute tariffs and is mightily annoyed that it has not happened... Agree or not with the idea of tariffs, they are not something that a US President can enact independently of international treaty or Congressional approval. But this imagined failure is reason to be angry with Obama!!
He is also opposed to Health Care Reform because, "it will cost me too much." When asked what he meant by that statement he mumbled Tea Party Cant.
This seems to be the mode. Find you own personal boo boo and blame someone. It doesn't have to make sense. There is no rigor, no understanding, no knowledge behind the randomly flung opinion. A bit like the Chimps with the sign on their cage.
Stand Back. Dung is Flung.
I understand the anger voters seem to be expressing, by the way. They have been treated to a blinding view of what lies behind the curtain. They have seen the totally ineffectual US Senate screw the pooch on Cap and Trade, bend the collective population over for a skilled reaming by insurance companies, and watch the people they sent to Washington in 2004 and 2006, cloth themselves in the mantle of corruption, greed, and a total lack of common sense as they preen and strut and proclaim loudly to "speak for Americans" while saying nothing at all. Neither political party is covered in glory.
But neither are we, the voters. We are treated to the Bantam Roosters, pontificating pundits, and meaningless pronouncements of what it all means, while we are left out here to fend for ourselves.
The Founders drew up a Democratic form of government based on the cherished belief that an informed electorate would do what is best, and if populism and momentary fashion chose poorly, the statesmen in the Congress and Executive Branch of government would steer the ship back on course.
In a culture driven by excess informed has come to mean "me, and what I imagine is going on', but "I don't really have time to find out the gritty details", so "they are all theives and liars".
Last nights election was the perfect example of the stupidity of an electorate that had no idea what they were voting for, what they expected, or what they are going to get.
"We have given you a Democracy..."