The Grand Illusion
One candidate for President discovered a few classified documents in his files, perhaps even a boxful, and turned them over. The other had scores of boxes of classified documents and tried to hide and keep them.
The first candidate has stuttered since he was a child and makes occasional conversational gaffes… and has for years. The second makes wild misstatements and utters thousands of untruths, almost all of which have been revealed to have little or no factual basis.
The first candidate lost his wife in a tragic car accident, but later remarried, and has a stable home life. The second candidate has been married three times with numerous affairs, including with a porn star, an affair he tried to cover up using campaign funds, and has been found guilty of sexual assault and defamation of the woman he assaulted.
The first candidate has always accepted the results of elections. The second candidate only accepts them when he wins and incited an attack on the capitol when he lost.
About the only similarity is that of age – both are near eighty.
Now… I could go on and on about the basic and important distinctions between Biden and Trump, the clear and obvious differences in character and behavior, which seem rather important to me.
Yet almost half the electorate either doesn’t see these differences… or doesn’t care.
And what does that say about that half?
I keep asking myself the same question. My neighbors seems like perfectly reasonable and sane human beings on every topic but who they want for President.
I’m sure the political system Heinlein came up with in Starship Troopers wouldn’t work (and I think he was more interested in posing the question than what might be the answer).
But an electorate that doesn’t bother to investigate or understand anything, and that ignores facts, is a greater danger to democracy than even a worthless demagogue like Trump.
It’s more like the system couldn’t ever get adopted politically.
when I first read Starship Troopers, I was taken by the concept of a franchise that anyone could obtain but that must be earned. It’s been interesting seeing other variations on this such as Jerry Pournelle’s Prince of Sparta novels. Unfortunately, as I’ve grown older, I have become more pessimistic and now think that the system would be corrupted by those who try to game it a la ex-President Bone-Spurs
“The first candidate wants to destroy America and everything it stands for. The second candidate doesn’t matter due to the first being so dangerous. Better to elect the second candidate.”
The above is the entirety of the Republican campaign plan. It’s rather ironic.
I thought that was the Democratic campaign plan. Not that it is wrong.
Most of us have asked the question about why people support Boy Orange. The first point is that it is not for one consistent reason. The easiest group to explain are the rich and people who want to be rich that expect Boy Orange will make them more rich and powerful. That is their goal, and they don’t care about the rest of it. Many of them equate rich and powerful with being right or blessed and believe that because they are rich and powerful they can do no wrong.
The next group wants to see everything burn. Some like the flames and some dislike the US. This group includes a lot of foreign-backed influencers.
The third group has been convinced that the system is rigged or unfair or something similar. The unfairness justifies a different behavior and means that laws don’t have to be followed because the other side is not being fair. This perspective can be applied to the two previous groups as well. Those groups only think the world is fair when they get everything they want.
I am sure there are more sub-groups. Ultimately, the Boy Orange supporters believe that any behavior is justified because there is some real or imaginary injustice going on and their behavior will fix it.
“Yet almost half the electorate either doesn’t see these differences… or doesn’t care.”
This deals (in part) with the concept of “akrasia” which can be thought of as a failure to do what one judges it best to do.
Donald Herbert Davidson solved the problem by saying that, when people act in this way they temporarily believe that the worse course of action is better because they have not made an all-things-considered judgment but only a judgment based on a subset of possible considerations, e.g. ‘inflation is present therefor the economy is bad’. I think Amélie Rorty tackled the problem better by distilling out akrasia’s many forms.
But, as usual, philosophy does not solve the political problem. That may be why, in the present world, there seems to be a wish for autocracy; as autocrats (present day “populists”) know that if you cannot change “the mind” then one can subdue it with incessant repetition.
Or it could be that the US electorate is just plain different. They might tend to favor celebrity-type figures in public life without any sense of whether that affects the function of the government they depend on. What other country loves pro wrestling, for example. It is the epitome of spectacle over truth and competency. I just guess we are going to suffer with the consequences of the elctorate’s choices.
Uh, Mexico?
Well, I guess that’s an apt comparison and serves to make the point. I suppose the US being equated to Mexico is what we deserve.