Category Archives: Elections

The Venerated Vote Discounted

Democracy, Elections, Individual Rights, Political Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans

The other day I said to a (male) friend: “I would give up my vote if I could be assured all women would do the same.” He replied: “In that case, I would consider voting.”

So does the vote count? Or does every vote counts?

Not at all. In “Default and Dynamic Democracy,” Loren E. Lomasky observed that, “As electorates increase in size, the probability that one’s vote will swing the election approaches zero” … “[I]n large-number electorates, there is a vanishingly small probability that an individual’s vote (or voice) will swing an election … [F]or citizens of large-scale democracies, voting is inconsequential.”

The winner in an election is certainly not the fictitious entity referred to as “The People,” but rather the representatives of the majority. While it seems obvious that the minority in a democracy is thwarted openly, the question is, do the elected representatives at least carry out the will of the majority?

In reality, the majority, too, has little say in the business of governance – they’ve merely elected politicians who have been awarded carte blanche to do as they please. As Benjamin Barber wrote:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.

In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy E. Barnett further homes in on why genuinely informed individuals have little incentive to exercise their “democratic right”:

If we vote for a candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for, but we have also consented to the laws she has voted against.
If we vote against the candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for or against.
And if we do not vote at all, we have consented to the outcome of the process whatever it may be.

This “rigged contest” Barnett describes as, “‘Heads’ you consent, ‘tails’ you consent, ‘didn’t flip the coin,’ guess what? You consent as well.'”

On a more pragmatic note, here is how my libertarian WND pal, Vox Day, explains why there will be “No Change After Nov. 2”:

“The reason we can be sure that the Republicans are going to betray the tea party once they come to congressional power is that we know that they are not going to even attempt to solve any of the four most pressing problems facing the nation at the moment. In some cases, Republicans are almost certainly going to try to make them worse. Consider:

1) The economy. Republicans have nothing to offer on the subject. They are almost completely silent on the subject of state bankruptcies, pension-fund shortages and the secrecy of the Fed. Trading fiscal policy-oriented Neo-Keynesians for monetary policy-oriented Monetarist Keynesians isn’t going to materially improve anything.

3) Immigration. Republicans are mostly on the wrong side of this as well, being self-destructive fans of unsustainable open borders.

4) The endless wars. Republicans still support invading and occupying other nations despite the overall cost of the Bush/Obama wars now exceeding one trillion dollars.”

(I omitted Vox’s second point, “The massive mortgage fraud.” As you all already know, as much as I abhor the fractional reserve system that embroils banks in fraud, I do not agree that the facts, to which one must cleave religiously, support the case of the deadbeat defaulters. But we’ve both written exhaustively—and respectfully–about our “foreclosure fracas” disagreement.)

To Vox’s list of Republican contributions to the political morass we’re in, Paul Gottfried adds some other intractable accomplishments.

UPDATED: Propaganda Central

Elections, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Politics, Propaganda

This time the CNN gig went not to Soledad O’Brien, the Agony Aunt of the “Black In America,” “Latino In the Same Place,” and plain “Boring in America” propaganda series, but to a like-minded brother (talk about lack of intellectual diversity!)

The gig: conveying to CNN’s dwindling audience how dangerous the tea party truly is.

The end product: “Boiling Point: Inside the Tea Party,” an amateurish production featuring a badly written script, a sinister sound track, and a lot of edgy adjectives in the service of a not-so-subliminal message: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.

From comedian Jon Stewart to the MSNBC desperadoes, to CNN’s race hucksters—the liberal media is adamant to do all they can to ward off the inevitable Republican victory (however futile that may be, as “there is no returning America to a place of financial safety”).

UPDATE (Nov. 1): I missed the left-liberal’s slur hereunder, in the Comments Section. I thought his spelling was remiss. But I had to cut out all the sexual insults he levied at my appearance to come to the gist of the one valid argument he came up with. Shows you how committed I am to argument here on BAB. Of course, humanity’s detritus considers it their right to post their bile on private property, which is what BAB is. Indeed, BAB Posting Policy does demand a valid email address. honestperson@aol.com: Is this not a valid addressed? As I said, I’m so committed to argument, that this kind of dreck can get the better of me.

UPDATED: The Comedy Central Campaign (The Monochromatic Face Of Morons)

Elections, Glenn Beck, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

The media meme is providing wall-to-wall coverage of the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert comic relief. The consensus is that the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” held by the two smarmy entertainers was all good. In contrast, naturally, to Glenn Beck’s middle America rally.

TIME magazine found statist clown Stewart “earnest and eloquent” as he preached from his perch of sinecure: “we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.”

And what do you know? The very same parrot press that was unable to gauge how many people attended Glenn’s rally; never contested the turnout at the Stewart event.

The magazine’s adoring description of the fun attendees conjured Pat Buchanan’s astute observation not so long ago about Americans: a silly people living in serious times.

“Attendees came decked out for the season, sporting zombie face-paint, Waldo costumes and Richard Nixon masks; a coven of Christine O’Donnells strolled by as Darth Vader snapped a picture with a conservationist toting a massive replica of an Arctic tern. To catch a glimpse of the proceedings, crowd members staked out space atop port-a-potties or climbed trees. Others hoisted Shepard Fairey-style Team Sanity placards and meta-ironic signs advertising their views on abortion, taxes, beards, Lost, Lyndon LaRouche and lunar prisons. ‘God Hates Rallies,’ declared one missive. ‘God Hates Snuggies,’ went another. Still a third: ‘I am pretty sure God Hates Us All Equally.’ There was a yellow Gadsden flag — the ubiquitous Tea Party emblem — but instead of ‘Don’t Tread on Me,’ it read, ‘OMG, Snakes!'”

Whereas tea party protesters have been described invariably as angry, ugly, racist, and not diverse; these equally monochromatic morons were “the stars of the show.”

To help you understand why American kids will become a drag on the country’s economy for years to come, meet rally attendee “Marsha Eck, a 54-year-old teacher from South Bend, Ind.,” who “expressed hope that the gathering could provide ‘a model for a new kind of conversation.'”

Or the “trio of teenagers from Downington, Pa., who came with their high-school civics class and wore matching lime-green t-shirts so that their teacher could spot them,” and who “explained that the rally was important because ‘everybody is yelling but nobody listens to each other.'”

Look, I know that in America, people who do stupid, venal, or ill-conceived things will generally suffer no setbacks. But, for my money, Jon Stewart’s stuttering attempt at politicking are mistaken. He had managed to keep his comedic hat on until now. This strength he has now forfeited.

UPDATED: The Monochromatic Face Of Morons. Monochromatic of mind, that is. Larry Auster has it:

The Twit Is Atwitter

Elections, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Technology, The Zeitgeist

Meghan McCain opened up her mouth to say nothing. There is nothing new about that. But media are aflutter—a sad fact that simply enforces what you already know about the state of American public life.

“Well, I speak as a 26-year-old woman and my problem is that, no matter what, Christine O’Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office,” McCain told anchor Christiane Amanpour. “She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business.”
McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that the message, “that sends to my generation is: one day you can just wake and run for Senate, no matter how [much of] a lack of experience you have. And it scares for me for a lot of reasons.”

Note Meghan’s constant allusions to her tender age. In another universe youth would be a reason to shut up. In the country in which kids are imbued with mythical qualities (Rousseau’s Noble Savage applied to small savages), the words of the greatest ditz to date to emerge from that big tent that Republicans keep touting carry as much heft as said heifer carries on her person.

Meghan is like a dripping tap. If you’ve read the first few lines of any of her blog posts, you’ve read all two diarrheic pages of it. Buzzwords peppered with clichés, and prefaced with “I feel like,” convey Meghan’s mushy, thinking-averse, pop-politics: “I feel like we need to be reaching out to moderates and young people. I feel like we need to be reaching out to minorities.”

The creature gets away with calling herself a writer because America has facilitated her delusions of grandeur. Meghan has “written” for Newsweek, no less, and now adds to the political bestiality on The Daily Beast. Both publications accept Ms. McCain’s version of a premise and a conclusion. For example: “I, like, disagree with that completely, and think that’s, like, completely crazy.”

As hopeless, Republicans have failed to make the only valid case against Meghan, and that is that she is really really stupid. But how can they, when making the case for the GOP are members of the same, hubristic Millennial generation? If smart adults were in charge, they would refuse to address anything Meghan disgorges from her puffy, painted face.

Idiots have come into their own in a big way, courtesy of depraved consumers, and complicit TV producers and publishers, of pixel and paper alike. The duller you are and the louder you crow in contemporary America, the better you do. Meghan McCain is not working with much—and is eminently qualified to dim debate in the Age of the Idiot.

As for “Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware,” I don’t know a lot about her, except that in the snippets I’ve caught from her debates, she has acquitted herself quite well.

Meghan’s cretinism and cringe factor far outweigh those of poor Christine’s, who seems sweet enough.