Election Day

To paraphrase a Mark Twain quote: In the first place, God created idiots, but that was just for practice: then he made politicians.

I thought this apt for Election Day, and I kept it firmly in mind as I strolled down Ridge Blvd to PS-102 to exercise my right and obligation as an American citizen this morning. I thought about a conundrum that my friends and I used to pose to each other long ago, when we were engaged in the deep philosophical discourses that most eight or nine year old boys have, once they have established whose dad could beat up the other dads: would you rather freeze to death or burn to death? This was really the problem that faced me as I stood in front of the school this morning, a choice involving the lesser of two evils.

I always chose freezing to death when asked this as a boy – it sounded a lot less painful and I am certainly averse to pain. Sure it hurts when your toes are frozen and someone stomps on them, the pain is exquisite but quickly throbs and ebbs to a manageable agony. Burns on the other hand are just plain pure Hell for weeks, until they finally heal. They blister and ooze and leave that sickly-sweet bacon smell that you can almost taste – something that I associate with politicians for some reason. Besides, I had always heard that when you were freezing to death you just fell asleep and never woke up. This sounded good to me, well, certainly better that being burned alive anyway, it’s all relative, and explains my politics.

This Election Day offered no interesting races, no chances for big changes, no opportunities to “send Washington a message,” and no real contests. Elliot Spitzer will be the next Governor, but all the usual suspects will stay in Albany. Hillary and Chuck will both get to keep their jobs, but so will the President and the majority of Republicans in the Senate. If anything, Washington will simply be gridlocked – which is surely an improvement over running amok – but just so not satisfying.

Our democracy is obviously just a sham (it was designed to be that way), and there is really just one party: The American Corporate Party, which represents the interests of big business (the democratic sub-party) and gigantic businesses (the republican sub-party) alike. The problem is confounded by the woeful state of the “informed electorate.” In a letter to Littleton Waller Tazewell in 1805, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession.” In the minutes of the Virginia Board of Visitors in 1821 he states, “No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." As a teacher, I can attest that we are in some pretty deep doo-doo!

What is even more fascinating is that many of the participants/perpetrators of the myth of the American Democracy, themselves believe in it. This is certainly the other root cause of the trouble. In preparing to write his Award winning novel Dune, Frank Herbert undertook six years of scholarly philosophical research. The novel is used as a vehicle to express his ontological and epistemological views, and through his protagonist he leaves some clear warnings for us, especially on Election Day: “The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.” Not that the word “great” would be the first that I would reach for to describe my political representation in this peoples’ democracy, but the point is nevertheless made.


Heisenburg showed us the walls enclosing our predestined arguments - knowledge has no uses without purpose, but purpose is what builds enclosing walls. Actually what I was really thinking about as I cast my vote on this mild November morning was how much I enjoyed playing with the little levers, whether or not the gray paint on the voting machines was Navy surplus, and what a satisfying “ker-chunk” the machines make when you pull the final big lever to record your vote – I LOVE the “ker-chunk!”

Perhaps this is the only reason why I still bother to show up and vote at all. I’m from a generation that still thinks that video pong is a pretty groovy idea – pretty groovy, but no substitute for pinball. I guess when I pull those levers I’m just hoping to hit the right ramps, light the specials, maybe get a little multi-ball happening, and possibly win a free game, if I’m really lucky. Of course, what I usually get is “Tilt.”