| Don't Tread on Me! by Ceci Lumley
Thinking about Vidal’s remark and about the worrisome electoral behavior which it summarizes so neatly, I was struck by another possibility. Yes, things are this way, but perhaps it is possible that we are misinterpreting the data. Here, for example, is a topsy-turvy take on the situation. Whatever our deficiencies, we have for some two centuries followed the rule of law (more often than not--come on, grant me that much) and have continued to have elections at the legally prescribed intervals. And on occasion—if the occasion happens to be especially fraught with peril (war, depression, social injustice)—an election may actually contain meaningful discourse. The 1998 congressional election was a revealing case in point. You had a president caught with his literal and legal pants down. He had had, by his own admission, illicit sex in the White House, and he had, everyone recognized, lied about it. The opposing party was gleeful: their bête noir had put his head in the guillotine and all that was left was for the blade to drop on election day. The opposition party had a solid foundation for an argument based on lax morals and disrespect for the law. An easy case. Of course, many Republicans, not only outbackers but urbanites as well, went too far and allowed their easy case to be tainted by echoes of divine judgment and retribution and extremely twee moral rectitude. The electorate (at least those who voted) had another idea. Not only did they not drop the blade, they indicated their strong desire to dismantle the guillotine, forget the scandal and get on with the business of the country. So unexpected was this result that almost all politicians and pundits across the spectrum had failed to see it coming. What was going on here? What kind of politics does America have? Maybe the American political process works in a manner precisely opposite to that which we learn about in school and which even out best intellectuals still cling to: the free discussion of ideas leads to the creation of parties, which then promote candidates espousing those ideas. What if something else is actually going in? For a moment, let’s change the motto to "e pluibus pluribum." From the many, many. Perhaps there are many Americas, co-existing, all the time. Rural, farming America, the various ethnic Americas, unionized America, the various religious Americas, the variously gendered Americas, the variously educated Americas, the variously moneyed Americas, and so on. It’s the old melting pot, for sure, but it turns out we don’t melt and meld quite as well as we learned in school. On occasion, as I said, yes, we’ll get together and DO it (the Civil War, the world wars, suffrage, civil rights, ending Vietnam), but otherwise all these Americas mainly want to be left alone to go their highly diverse ways. Elections, then, become messages to the cosseted, semi-corrupt, self-centered "leaders" about the state of the various Americas. Most of the time, the results form only little blips on the vast curve of American history. A particular one of these Americas may now and then focus itself, its energy, its money, and cause a larger blip, as the allegedly Christian Republicans did in 1994. But woe unto the party which translates its micro-mandate into an assumed right to rule absolutely, to impose its narrow ideas on the motley mass of all these Americas. Sure, we use elections to elect representatives. And sure, we make certain choices based on some vague set of ideas when we elect these people. But only a third to a half of Americans actually do this and drag themselves to the polls to vote. Why? Is it indifference, as the cynic says? Is it ignorance, as the intellectual says? No. It is rather because the true consensus of America is "Don’t Tread on Me." The parties can make changes, from fine-tunings for this or that interest group to major overhauls where injustice is too great to be overlooked any longer, but for the most part, the politicians themselves are as adrift as we are in this vast sea of social, political opportunity—and opportunism. Politics—political discussion of the kind so desired by our heirs to European debate—just isn’t possible here. And is also not desirable. America, contrary to our best civics lessons, is an on-going experiment not in politics but in life. E pluribus pluribum. END |
"America doesn’t have politics; it has elections."
It’s hard to make any solid case refuting