Henry Dampier

On the outer right side of history

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It’s Time To Cultivate Progressive Defectors

When a party wins an election, that party’s followers, at least in the early days, become much less persuadable than they were in the past. This is because they begin to believe that their hands are on the strings of power, that their opinions are being represented in Washington, and that they only need to protect their men in office from attacks to give them some time to implement their shared agenda.

The strings that party-people think are connected to power are actually connected to nothing but a spring that makes like it feel like there’s tension on the string. The elections are the packaging that provide a shine of legitimacy to the system that’s running on the back end. The back offices are where all the work gets done in politics.

People who think they’re in power, even if they aren’t in power, are going to feel secure in their imaginary position. They’re not going to be amenable to persuasion.

Mistaking the politicians for the leaders is like mistaking the sports star who endorses an energy drink for the scientists who develop the chemical composition of the beverage. It’s like thinking ‘Flo’ from Progressive is actually the CEO of the insurance company. It’s almost as bad as thinking that there are real elves operating the Keebler factory. While politicians do have to be able to improvise, other people write their scripts for them and provide direction. On occasion, there are gifted democratic politicians in the way that there are gifted actors. The way that these actors can be useful is in creating a lot of public enthusiasm that can be channeled towards on purpose or another, for fair reasons or foul.

Anyway.

The reason why it’s time to make more appeals to open-minded progressives is because when the party loses a major election, it starts to send out hunters to develop a new strategy and to build new alliances. Whereas the party in pseudo-power will tend to become more rigid and ‘practical,’ the party out of power will encourage its members to become creative and more open. No one actually needs them to take any strong actions in the immediate term, so the sheep are permitted to wander about the pasture more freely than they would otherwise be.

This is also a time when party leaders will be blaming parts of the existing coalition and burning themselves up with recriminations. This resulting alienation tends to knock some of them loose, especially if they’re young and impressionable. This represents an opportunity to skim some of the cream from the left’s coalition, and to completely demoralize those who can’t be skimmed.

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More Reasons to Say No to Voting

  • Democracy is a destructive political selection method that places the property and lives of the better part of the civilization at the disposal of the worst instincts of the majority.
  • It’s for this reason that the Founding Fathers opposed Democracy as stridently as they did. It took more than 150 years for the American Republic to institute Universal Suffrage, and almost 200 years to go all the way into the pit.
  • It’s not so much about the time you spend voting at the polls, but also the time that you spend informing yourself about different candidates for election.
  • You could be spending this time & money on improving:
    • Your life
    • Your children’s lives

Its the time and energy that people spend on making these electoral decisions that fuels so much of the media.

What James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 is just as true today as it was when he wrote it:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assembleand administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

Was James too wordy for you?

Maybe so. That’d be one of the good reasons why universal suffrage is a bad idea.

Returning politics to the hands of the capable and removing it from the hands of the incompetent is a good long-term goal. Preventing as much of the inevitable destruction and civil war that tends to be comorbid with outbreaks of democracy is a high-minded goal, and one worth striving for. Madison won the debate in the short term, but Democracy won in the long run.

More reasons you shouldn’t vote:

 

  • Not voting and arguing against voting is less about the direct impact on the election, and more about depleting the legitimacy of the democratic process.
  • Depleting the legitimacy of the democratic process is less about persuading commoners against it (who will lose political power, but gain in other areas), but about converting the leaders who can be converted, and demoralizing or otherwise neutralizing those that can’t be.
  • Voting feeds the business model of electioneering. Not voting puts electioneers out of work.
  • An increasingly anti-democratic public mindset is one that is more expensive to persuade to remain democratic or to return to belief in democracy.
  • While voting in slightly less destructive representatives might have a minor (and questionable at that) impact on policy, any short term gains will be overwhelmed by long term destruction.

Go to work or stay at home, but don’t vote.

Become more engaged in civil society instead. Voting has no chance of resolving the difficult collective problems facing Americans and people in similar political situations. The only vote that you might want to consider is one to secede from the union. Anything else is a major drain on your attention and time.

[NOTE: Thanks to reader Thorgeir Lawspeaker for correcting the embarrassing mis-attribution of Federalist No. 10.]

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Just Say No To Voting

My reason why is fairly simple.

To succeed in politics, you must have a strong strategy laid out. Republicans have no such strategy. They are an outer party doomed to continually disappoint their most ardent supporters. This inevitable disappointment maintains a long-term cycle of failure. Still being relatively young, and hoping to maintain a very long-term outlook, merely scoring a temporary political victory that lasts for a few short years has no appeal to me whatsoever.

While it may be true that the Republican Party is capable of slowing the advance of the militant left by a few short years, that is all that it’s capable of before spending all of its capabilities.

The main reason not to vote, for any reason, is to preserve resources for a counter-attack.

To prepare for a counter-attack, you must bait your stupid enemy into sending all of his most valuable forces into an indefensible position, such as a valley or a plain. If the enemy is especially stupid and short-sighted, he will maneuver into such a trap in a predictable fashion.

Such a counter-attack would look something like a successful secession campaign in a major American region outside the core economic zone on the ‘Acela corridor’ between Washington D.C. and New York City.

The left was once managed by canny political operators. This is no longer the case. It is now primarily driven by idiots. Idiots are wonderful, at least when they’re on the opposing side, because they can be manipulated in a predictable fashion. Unfortunately, the same idiots that run the left also run the right.

Another reason not to vote is that it creates real despair among the small number of Democracy-shepherds. If you harm their ability to drive votes in a measurable way, you can blow up their careers. These types are numbered in the mere hundreds and thousands: they can be disabled much more simply than enormous populations can be.

So, don’t vote. Save your time. Save your money. Focus on preparing for the future, instead. Be willing to cede territory so that you can take it back later.

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