As Republicans continue to complicate the voting process in
each succeeding year they’re in power, perhaps someday we’ll just say, the hell
with it. That’s the hope, as you see below.
Let’s face it, the right to vote is slipping away.
Republicans have used their activist conservative courts to legitimize right
wing extremism that claims that voter fraud exists, even without any proof. It
plays very well with the natural conservative fear that somebody’s taking something away
from them-like their vote.
With voter ID come’s a regulatory mess of convoluted hours,
days and requirements to register and vote. And oddly, with the courts approval,
nothing is too inconvenient anymore either.
Again, the idea is to make voting a troublesome and an almost
unnecessary act that in the big picture isn't worth the effort. “Maybe not this time” we'll say, due to that 20 minute drive to
the other side of town where we’ll wait in a 3 hour line.
National Review loser and correspondent Kevin Williamson expresses
what GOP politicians are suggesting all the time, and what we’re seeing in
conservative tweets and Facebook sites as well.
If you would like to be filled with despair for the
prospects of democracy, spend a few minutes attempting to decipher the psephological
musings of Lena Dunham, the distinctly unappealing actress commissioned by
Planned Parenthood to share with her presumably illiterate following “5 Reasons
Why I Vote (and You Should, Too).” That’s 21st-century U.S. politics
in miniature: a half-assed listicle penned by a half-bright celebrity
and published by a gang of abortion profiteers.
Miss Dunham, reflecting celebrity culture at large, makes a
fetish of voting, and it is easy to see why: Voting is the most shallow gesture
of citizenship there is, the issuance of a demand — a statement that “this is
how the world should be,” as Miss Dunham puts it — imposing nothing in the way
of reciprocal responsibility. Power without responsibility.
As a procedure for sorting out complex policy issues, voting
is of distinctly limited value: If you wanted to know whether the compressive
strength of a particular material were sufficient to support a bridge over
Interstate 20, you would not go about solving that problem by bundling that
question with 10,000 other equally precise and complex but largely unrelated
questions ... to the least-informed few million
people you could identify ... That would be a bad way to build a bridge — a
homicidal way, in fact — and though it is a necessary instrument of
accountability in a democratic republic, voting properly plays a very limited
role.
For instance, we have a Bill of Rights, which could with
equal accuracy be called the List of Stuff You Idiots Can’t Be Trusted To Vote
On.
But for Miss Dunham et al., this isn’t a question of
citizenship — it’s a therapeutic matter. Voting, she promises, will offer “a
sense of accomplishment,” knowledge that one has done the right thing, even
“joy.” But checking a box is the most trivial accomplishment imaginable; having
done so is no guarantee that one has done the right thing, inasmuch as voters
routinely make bad decisions for evil reasons.
She writes: “The crazy and depressing truth is that there
are people running for office right now who could actually affect your life.
PARTICULARLY your sex life. PARTICULARLY if you’re a woman. Yup.” The very
conservative editors of this magazine are in fact trying to make it
easier for them to do so with over-the-counter birth control … so allow me to
pass along the message: We really, truly, sincerely do not wish to be involved
in your sex life.
Yup, and that must mean conservative men don’t want to be
involved in their own sex life or use birth control. But just be clear...
I would like to suggest, as gently as I can, that if you are
voting as an act of self-gratification, if you do not understand the role that
voting in fact plays in a constitutional republic, and if you need Lena Dunham
to tell you why and how you should be voting — you should not vote. If you get
your politics from actors and your news from television comedians — you should
not vote. There’s no shame in it, your vote is statistically unlikely to affect
the outcome of an election.
Pretty easy message to understand. Who cares about voter suppression, since we "should not vote" anyway.
