“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good…” – H.L. Mencken
July 29, 2018 edition, The Hour, Norwalk, Connecticut, The front page feature, “Young Voters Signing Up,” showcased a welcome development in the Constitution State—increased registration of young voters, ages 18-25. According to the article, between November 9, 2016 and July 23, 2018, 12,444 enrolled as Democrats, 5,274 as Republicans with 24,144 enrolled as unaffiliated; for a grand total of 43,011. Thankfully, more than half eschewed Democrats and Republicans, which hopefully, will become a trend. For in November 2016, only 46.1 percent of eligible voters in the 18–29-year-old group showed up at the polls, according to the Census Department, an obvious and welcome backlash to the political establishment. Yet…
…six weeks prior to The Hour feature, in New York City, David Rothenberg, Broadway producer, and publicist, volunteered time signing up young voters for the upcoming mid-term elections. He observed that for every 25-year-old who signed up, there was another 25-year-old stating, “Why bother, it doesn’t do any good.” A refrain preceded by another this writer has heard in every election since Nixon, “lesser of two evils.” The latter, of course, inevitably results in evil; and as a prelude to the former, produces horrific collateral damage to that building block of representative government known as Consent of the Governed, which for all intents and purposes has been dead and buried for years. For America’s blueprint for government, the Constitution, together with its attendant Bill of Rights or the citizens’ protection against the infringements of government, have been superseded by a roster of initiatives throughout the years. Such as the August 1971 Lewis Powell Memo or Manifesto of American Fascism, the Wolfowitz Doctrine of Preemptive War, Plan for the New American Century, the Patriot Act, 2002 National Security Strategy, Citizens United.. Providing America’s royalty with a primacy of monolithic proportions, while at the same time, enabling the controlling interests to train Democrats and Republicans to answer that dinner bell of election cycle handouts like Pavlov’s Dog. Inflaming, then, growing public disenchantment with representative government to which historical parallels abound.
July 1932, the Weimar Republic, in a fractured Germany beset by depression, virulent nationalism, political extremism… in parliamentary elections, the Nazis logged 37.4 percent of the vote, with the Communists gathering 14.6 percent. Fifty-two percent of German voters cast their ballots for two competing factions that were opponents of representative government.[1] In the United States, during the 2016 Presidential elections, a similar development occurred.
Of 231,556,622 eligible voters, 46.7 stayed home. Of 136,700,729 who did vote for president, 62,979,636 voted for Trump while 65,844,610 opted for Hillary Clinton. The former emerged the victor by electoral college vote count.[2] The present dislike of the electoral college is misplaced when compared to the real picture which emerges here. Only 53.3 percent of eligible voters showed up to exercise their obligation as the Third Estate in the American system of government. Yet of those 136,700,729 who did turn out, 128,824,246 or 94.4 percent cast their ballots for candidates who had no intention of following the precepts of representative government inherent in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The 46.7 percent of those eligible voters who sat out the November 2016 plebiscite understood, perhaps, the reality inherent in America today as opposed to those who chose to cast their ballots: That the citizenry is no longer sovereign.
In a nation where constitutional boundaries had been clearly established to create a functioning system of representative government, known to history as the famed American system of checks and balances, such is not the case in present-day America because such concepts as the Rule of Law have been left to wither on the vine. Conversely, governmental structure has not been so fundamentally altered as it has been successfully transformed into that of an authoritarian variety; a protracted process of corporate manipulation that has succeeded in vastly reducing citizen participation. The ensuing progression of depoliticization of the citizenry is borne out by the numbers above. Political power of the citizenry has been and continues to be suborned by the growing power of the State, the Corporate State. A power which operates outside the boundaries of constitutionally-ordained government.
Yet those who chose to vote—and by overwhelming numbers did so for Democrats and Republicans who, at this stage on the national level are little better than order takers for America’s royalty—insured that mass compliance with an encroaching despotism that will see to that evolution from an authoritarian to a totalitarian state.
And for those enamored with that so-called Christian bedrock of the American political ethic, would do well to consult the history of Christianity. For throughout the centuries of the Christian epic, the authoritarian or despot usually triumphs over the precepts of the Prince of Peace.
Endnotes
[1] See page 293, Chapter 4, “Towards the Seizure of Power,” The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans, 2004. See also page XV, “introduction,” The Nazi Revolution, by John Small, 1959.
[2] The United States Elections Project, www.electorproject.org/2016g
