The Idiot Vote

They are the people who have to be appealed to, by any means necessary. They are volatile, impulsive, unreliable, and mysterious as to their ultimate motives (one suspects, because they don't have any). They are the people all campaign speeches are made to, and all advertisements directed toward. Are they the stalwart, straight-line, yellow dog/blue dog party loyalists? Heck no -- we can take them for granted. I'm talking about the "undecideds" here -- sometimes more euphemistically described as "independents". They are not party members, because they don't care enough about the political process to have anything to do with it between major elections. So they are also, as one might expect, not "well-informed", nor do they have an abiding interests in matters political, social, or economic. Their only abiding interest seems to be in carnal pleasures and vegetative leisure, and in the pocketbook that makes these possible. And yet -- or so it appears -- they vote. I.e., they are willing to go out, in all kinds of weather, in early November at least once every four years, and participate in a process that they are, the rest of the time, just dimly aware of... and as to its significance, not aware of at all. Yes, I blame the prominence of the "undecideds" on the voting fetish, to some extent. If we had not been told, from our tender years on, that voting was the highest privilege a citizen of a democracy could ever enjoy, and that not voting was akin to treason, we would not have the "undecided" problem we have today. But the meme has been implanted, and now millions of people trudge off to the pools in any given November knowing no more about the candidates than they gleaned from a TV sound bite that hasn't yet disappeared from their short-term memory. And yet -- and this is what causes thinking people to tear their hair and foam at the mouth -- these are the people who determine the outcome of our elections, almost without exception. These are the people who have to be courted, and amused, and entertained, and who have to be brainwashed with jingles and rhymes and bumper stickers, and who (in some cases) have to be given "walking-around money" just to get them out of bed and to the polls. So when we view the absurdities of the election season -- the mouthing of words, the inanities, the vapid slogans -- we have to remember that none of it is meant for us. It's meant for people who, in any sensible system, wouldn't be allowed to vote in the first place.