If These Things Anger You

Thomas Fleming writes:

America's overworked political pundits have a tough job, shaping and dishing out, week after week, the agitprop of the two-party state. This week, they hardly know where to begin. Should they pick the winner in the Ohio primary or join the chorus attacking talkshow host Rush Limbaugh insulting a law student who demanded free contraceptives? However, even more urgent than the desire to destroy Limbaugh is the need to cast doubt on Vladimir Putin's victory in Russia's presidential election.

Everyone knew that Putin was going to win, and even anti-Putin pollsters admitted he would get at least 60% of the vote, which would be a landslide in an American election. But, cry the pundits, Putin has the support of the peasantry. The smart people in the cities who can watch the BBC and read the New York Times--the people who really count in any country--they are holding spontaneous anti-Putin demonstrations. Pro-Putin demonstrators are either state employees doing a job or mere yokels. In other words, Russia=the USA, where only rubes and crazies would support Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul.

The pundits, long in advance, were also predicting corruption and irregularities, as they always do whenever the the US regime disapproves of election results. The fall-back position is that Putin and his cronies rigged the election in advance by restricting the pool of candidates.

Let us suppose both arguments are valid. The proper response is the American wiseguy's "So what?" There is enough voter fraud and manipulation in American elections to merit international observers, but when you are the world's only remaining superpower, the question does not seem to come up. American history is studded with corrupt presidential contests, but, again, since we all retrospectively adore Jack Kennedy, the abuses of his presidential campaign are not worth talking about. Today, with electronic voting, no one actually knows what is going on, and after an incredible amount of time and money George W. Bush's victory in Florida--and thus in the whole country--still bears a question mark. Fortunately, "hanging chads" are not an issue when computers control the process. And who controls the computers? Nobody seems to know. Perhaps we really do not care which set of looters controls which sector of the government. One way or the other, we are going to be looted.

American elections have never been clean. Nevertheless, the sauce for the Russian goose cannot be ladled on the American gander. This is especially clear in the case of the charge that Putin's party rigged the election in advance by restricting the pool of candidates. Here in America, we call this manoeuvre the primary system.

In our two-party state, ballot access for third party candidates is very restricted. After all, only Democrats and Republicans were involved in writing federal and state election laws. There is no mention of political parties in the Constitution, and while two political coalitions emerged very early--the faction of Hamilton versus the faction of Jefferson--they did not function as political parties in the later sense. There were no chairmen, party lines, or caucuses to enforce discipline on independent-minded members of Congress or state legislatures.

Today, by contrast, the parties are everything, and while there certainly are factions with the parties and considerable contention over which group is going to get the boodle available to whoever wins an election, the very broad area of consensus between the parties virtually defines the American regime.

One important consensus we can deduce by observing the facts: No competent or honest or principled man is to be permitted to run for high office. Run the tape of presidential elections backward: Obama and McCain, Bush II and Kerry, Bush and Gore, Clinton and Dole, Clinton and Bush I. A population of 300 million people cannot come up with more plausible simulacra of normal beings than Al Gore or Bob Dole, Barack Obama or Santorum-Romney?

There are, of course, many reasons for the mediocre (if that) quality of our political leaders. The electronic media tend to eliminate honest and intelligent men who believe what they say and think about their answers. My poor friend Jim Stockdale was dragooned into being Ross Perot's running mate--Perot assured him he would just use his name temporarily until he could find a politician. Admiral Stockdale was a war hero and philosopher, a man who had been tortured for years by the North Vietnamese and come out of it sane. In the glare of the TV lights, this wise and good man appeared to be dazed, when in fact he was only bemused to find himself in such a predicament. Interestingly, Jesse Jackson got it right. The other VP candidates, he said, seemed like children in the presence of a grown man.

The media is also partly to blame for the price tag of political victories. Only billionaires and the stooges of billionaires can expect to get anywhere, and this requirement pretty much eliminates the chance of having any desirable candidates. Imagine a country dominated by the intelligence and taste of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, and you can understand the United States.

But on a more fundamental level, the parties themselves are machines that run on corruption and exercise tyranny. It is the parties that put up the John Kerrys and John McCains, and the parties that rule in the name of the four-year puppet-emperors that exercise merely ceremonial power in the American shogunate.

Many Americans know all this, and political manipulation is hardly something new in the world. Decades ago, one of our greatest poets (Robinson Jeffers) told the truth:

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting,
If these things anger you.

What did anger Jeffers and it ought to anger all decent Americans is the hypocrisy of our politicians and pundits who go around the world giving "penny readings" on democracy, freedom, and openness. If the day ever comes when the Russian or Chinese goose is in a position to flap its wings, I can only hope that Hilary Clinton and the staff of the New York Times are around to get slapped in the face by a big angry bird.