McCUTCHEON VERSES FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

The Supreme Court set to feed the greedy—again.

Government finance is different from a business or a job. The government can increase its income but in a democracy, it exists in a free market of ideas and not royal power or cash, which makes democracy so different from all other forms of government. It has to ask the people being governed to raise the government’s income and the government has to agree. If the people want something, they have to pay for it. If they think the government is not spending money wisely, they can cut taxes. So what is going so wrong in America? The answer might be simpler than you think; however, that does not mean it will be “simple” to fix.

The government is the body of representatives we send to Washington. They are supposed to represent the people but more and more they do not. In an electoral system that seems to be impossible but it is not. We are living in a country that provides us empirical proof on a daily basis that this ideal is not the case. I have cited a number of cases in this blog site that proves representatives do not vote the will of the people: subsidies to big oil companies, gun registration, and voter suppression, to name a few. Therefore, the question is how do we get such a “disconnect” between the people and the government.

As a person interested in evolutionary psychology, I like to think that there is a natural driving force within people. We can talk about politicians lying talk the people into electing them. Governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and McCrory of North Carolina are classic examples. They simply did not tell the truth while campaigning and once elected they use the power of their office to corrupt the government in the sense they did things the people did not want. In politics, this is business as usual. What happens in politics reminds me of the definition of a good lawyer. A guilty man wants a good lawyer not to see that justice is served, but to see that justice is not served: George Zimmerman and O. J. Simpson are proof of that. A good campaign advisor is one who can convince people to vote for someone they do not want. Karl Rove is a good campaign advisor. Like lawyers, good campaign advisors have reputations. The next candidate that could not be elected because he or she does not represent the majority of the people, but has other interests, will hire the best campaign advisor. This is the exact opposite of what the people want.

The lawyer to campaign advisor comparison does not explain why the person wants to hire these kinds of people. Out of our bestial past we have innate traits; hierarchy dominance for example. Some people will do anything to be top “chicken” in the peck order. Fairness, equality, honesty, strength, appearance and all other characteristics we want in our leaders no longer seems to count; only the drive to be the leader has merit. The money will be there if you want to be leader bad enough to be willing to sell yourself. In our system of democracy, the merits or leadership quality are subservient to innate drive to be a leader.

The people will not follow a leader they do not think should be their leader.  Choosing our leaders in small societies is an intimate thing; however, large societies we need intermediaries, an intermediaries changed everything. The larger the group the more necessary intermediaries become. Perhaps 330,000,000 people, the population of the United States, are too many for direct representation. Our Founding Father recognized this when we were no more than a scattered population divided among 13 states. Perhaps we should recognize this system has it faults when we formed the United Nations at the with a world population of 7 billion. As humans, we tend to look to make small units bigger. Perhaps we should somehow turn and look to the smaller and smaller unit: family, neighborhood (school board), city, county, state, nation and finally world. I grew up thinking democracy was the way to do this; however, something has gone wrong.

What seems to be wrong is another basic or innate human trait called greed. People run for office to become rich, or if rich to start with, to become richer. Campaign managers become managers to become rich; the more they win the richer they become. The Supreme Court, also corrupted by money, is about to feed that greed with another decision equivalent to Citizens United. It cannot bode well for representative government.

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