I often struggle to understand things more than I should
have too. The unsolved issues lie dormant
in the recesses of my mind. I was reading Revolution! South America and the
Rise of the New Left (Nikolas Kozloff, 2008) this morning when I came across
the expression “elective politics” juxtaposed
next to “participatory” politics. It
took a little while for the significance of what the author wrote to make
sense. If someone stuff ballot boxes with false votes or buys Supreme Court Judges
or spends billions of dollar on candidates who do not represent the people but
who wins the vote that is electoral politics.
I did not have the presence of mind to differentiate it clearly from plurality
politics. For example, I have blogged before; the person with the most votes
wins, or once you cast your vote you cannot get it back believing the vote count
represents a majority opinion. Our founding fathers formed our government on
the idea that the maximum number of votes truly represents the wishes of the
people—participatory government. Reince Priebus, Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, Sheldon Adelson,
David and Charles Koch, the Walton family among others do not what that. They
want to elect leaders who do not represent the people. I did not understand that
when elective politics put George Bush in the White House but now I do. The fight against Mitt Romney may be over; he
was not what they wanted. He, like Bush,
was a figurehead for elective politics. The fight to maintain a participatory
government can only get worse.
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