My faith in democracy is pretty low right now. There's a lot of bullshit pedaling and unproductive narrative framing that seeks to elevate a group and ignore their flaws while magnifying the flaws of the other group. To make politics a sport and participate in fandom helps no one. To adopt positions in the name of dogmatism and tradition helps no one. Sports are fun because of the lack of external consequences at the end of the result. It doesn't matter who wins. But now trapped in a democracy of two immobile forces that can't admit their own faults, votes mean little and the system becomes an obstacle rather than a means of collective agreement on policy and direction. It's a game where nobody has fun and most people end up losing in one way or another.
This topic is a little bit of a messy one and potentially controversial, but I'll split discussion into three areas: how division separates people from policy, how such a separation gets people to vote against their best interests, and finally describe the need to plan against democracy and why folks altogether need to be more independent of the results of democracy and plan selfishly and intelligently.
There is little debate that politics is very divisive nowadays. I wrote the first post in the series to revisit the idea that politics today overlaps with the sports realm more than we realize. The biggest issue being that fans of a team will tend to overlook the flaws of members of their team while being quick to expose the flaws of members of the other team. Unfortunately, this analogy falls apart when there is a lack of an external entity to enforce the rules of the game. One could argue that some of this role falls to the media, but within the past election cycle the media has been both weaponized and targeted and have also been pushed to covering news from one of the teams sidelines as opposed to the press box. Without an external referee to establish rules and protect the integrity of the game, incentives drive everything.
There is no incentive to expose personal or team fault on one side and lots of incentive to aggressively expose fault on the other side to gain position or some advantage in the game. Taking people down on the other side and raising one's own position and stature is a means of scoring points. But since the focus is on winning the game (via electoral results, legislative action, or judicial positioning), no time is taken to critique one's position because the underlying validity of that position doesn't matter. Only the ability to undermine an opponent's policies matters and the ability to occasionally praise oneself when one's own policy works. This becomes a problem when both platforms have fundamental flaws. Both teams can effectively give compelling reasons why the other team is bad, yet no one is willing to abandon these teams as they dominate the competitive landscape of the game. One unfortunately must engage in the partisan game in order to play. So the game never fundamentally changes.
Since these teams have such a stronghold on the national narrative and since there is no incentive to change position (or even reflect on their own position), things often move very slowly and orthogonal to most people's best interests. Interestingly enough, things tend to move faster and are more correlated to positions with lots of money behind them. Again, something about incentives there. Everybody is yelling about the same ideas over and over again, and accomplish very little. This produces policy that tends to be short sighted (to win points) and in the long run does very little to help your ordinary individual. But given the sheer numbers of resources given to government and the fact that policies that score points tend to be expensive, we essentially have created a slowly growing leech that rarely does anything useful while both teams praise themselves for their great accomplishments while blaming the other team for the fact that there's not a lot to show for it.
Voting is our instrument to produce change, but it is also the primary instrument for scoring wins within the game. Thus, the incentive to change the system that everyone agrees to some extent doesn't work is often outweighed by the incentive to achieve victory for one's team in the partisan game. The public is at least somewhat aware in that they often label the situation as voting the lesser of two evils, but it's really an abdication of responsibility and a buying into the partisan game than making a decision based on any sort of principle and accepting the consequences of potentially losing. It's basically saying that the situation sucks, but I have to take one for the team and vote for mediocrity, because the other team is worse and I want to win (most people won't admit the second part).
What is even worse now is that policy positions are now more than ever game positions rather than actual policy positions. I would argue that Joe Biden's strongest and clearest policy is to defeat Donald Trump, but oddly enough that has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with the game. Assume the other team is bad and try to win points by offering yourself as the alternative. This position is a little embarrassing from a policy level, however, it is very efficient at getting to the point. What is perhaps most harmful about this position is that it has been used to shoot down ideas from candidates both playing within the partisan system (Bernie Sander's progressive policies) and now candidates from outside the system (Justin Amash's conservative libertarian and anti-partisan policies). The argument that one must kill potentially viable policies simply in the name of winning destroys progress and is wasteful in that we continue funding policies and government that isn't really doing anything in moving that policy forward. The problem is not that we should support Sanders or Amash, but we should be willing to engage with their ideas (and vote on them) instead of encouraging people to get out of the way so winning is easier for one team.
But an overwhelming majority of the country plays the partisan game, so in the end it was always going to be about winning the game and never about policy legitimacy. That is why I have little faith in democracy. This leads to the final point. How can I as an individual outside the partisan game continue to survive and potentially thrive regardless of who wins and what policies they pass?
It doesn't look like the game is going to end anytime in the near future. Even in extreme times such as now with millions of people unemployed and a health crisis exposing how poorly prepared the current leadership is. Things could change if things get worse, but there's no reason to bet all our chips that things will change even if the system continues to prove that it fails to serve the people it claims to serve. What one needs to strive for is independence from the state. I'm not saying that you should not pay your taxes, but be prepared for your taxes going up and rules that may potentially get in your way. Hedge your risks against the worse case scenarios.
Let's consider the two evils problem again. Plan on worse of two evils winning. What needs to change in order to protect yourself and people you care about from risk? As it may turn out, not a lot changes from these politicians that play the game within the system. The game constrains them. While people exaggerate the importance of an election to influence their peers to play the partisan game, often it turns out there isn't a lot of meaningful policy that separates politicians inside the system. Or at least meaningful policy that gets passed. Regardless of the impact of a preferred candidate losing, if you prepare for the negative scenario, you are freed up to play outside the game. To exercise your vote how you please. To focus on meaningful policy you actually care about. To live as independent from the whims of democracy as you are willing to prepare for. If you lose, it doesn't matter. You are prepared. You chose not to play. Things may happen that you don't like, but at least you are ready to adapt to them.
The majority of folks are playing the partisan game, and unfortunately its a game that has consequences. And the best way to prepare against the leeches in government is simply to plan against the worst and choose not to play.