Hold Your Nose
 

I had the idea to write an Election Day piece quite a while ago. What I had in mind back then in no way resembles what I’m about to write. It occurred to me, while reading a centrist appeal to vote for our values, that this election really comes down to holding our noses.

Bear with me awhile whilst I explain that.

Should we hold our noses and vote for socialized medicine, open borders, massive welfare, failed and evil victim disarmament, punish-the-successful economics, and appeasement-based foreign policy simply because the alternative is hostile to our values?

Should we hold our noses and vote for big-oil subsidization, library searches, illegal detainments, the so-called Patriot Act, illegal declarations of war, and an unnecessary invasion and occupation simply because the alternative is hostile to our values?

Should we hold our noses and spend our precious agent-of-change vote on a third party that we must, honestly, acknowledge cannot win at any state or federal level, simply because we wish a conscience free from the knowledge that we voted for ANY party hostile to our values?

Should we hold our noses and stay home – waste our precious agent-of-change vote, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the rigged game by refusing to play?

Can it be that one option is as repugnant, or only slightly less so than every other? Is the only choice now left to us to pick between evils? What is to be our guide in choosing between equally bad?

Or perhaps the question is: How did we get to a point where our only choice is evil or evil?

I think I can answer that one. We got to this point by systematically removing the shackles of the Constitution from the American government. Each arm we unchain throws punches, each leg lashes out. Each tie we undo is one more place upon ourselves, of our own undoing. When we stopped applying the laws governing our government, we created the opportunity for tyranny, which has grown day by day, year by year.

I don’t know whether to blame ignorance or malice.

On one hand, there’s the innate human tendency to seek power, best exemplified by Lincoln’s Secretary Of State William Seward’s boast that he could ring a bell and have any man in the nation arrested at whim.

On the other hand, there’s the innate human tendency to try to raise up those in distress, best exemplified by Noam Chomsky’s assertion that the massive welfare nation must flourish for the good of the poor and destitute.

Let a man seek personal power under the guise of seeking charity and hospitality for all, and there’s no measuring the number of previously reasonable people he could bend to his cause. With the apparent blessings (and the votes) of reasonable people, there’s no measuring the political force that man could wield, the laws he could change in pursuit of fairness and justice.

We’ve seen it before – liquor was once blamed for all of society’s evils, by a majority of previously rational people. The putrid lies of “gun control” and “the drug war” had their roots in racism, but are now regarded as near gospel by what are deemed to be rational people. The invasion of Iraq came about because previously rational people demanded action based on the implied (and false) connection that Saddam Huessein was planning to attack America.

When we ask who is to blame for the evils and evil choices of today, we need only look at our neighbors, who advance an agenda handed down to them for the past 150 years. THEY are the ones who cannot recognize the evil their choices propagate, and so are doomed to repeat history.

Whether we vote for change or vote our values, vote Republican or Democrat, Green, Libertarian, or not at all, we are more or less not aware that the choice of evils that we face is ultimately the responsibility of people who were either too selfish or stupid to realize the monster they were loosing upon their country long ago, and of the people since then who were too selfish or stupid to put a halt to it when they had the chance.

We have been cast by those before us, for good or ill, into a position where the ONLY choices left to us are between a rock and a hard place, bad or worse.

It is no longer a choice between good and evil, right or wrong. It is no longer a choice between those who would bind government down and those who would give it powers it neither needs nor deserves. It is no longer a choice between freedom and tyranny, chains or liberty, life or death. It is a choice between tyrants who cast their tyranny in the light of fairness and common welfare, or those who cast their tyranny in the light of safety and protection. When measured by the yardstick that is our highest law, it is clear one side wishes to enslave us for our own protection, the other for our own well-being.

You cannot deny it. Those are the choices: Those and no other.

The question now becomes – what to do? Knowing that we have been doomed to this choice by the selfishness, stupidity, and cowardice of those who chose to either support evil and illegal policies, or go along to get along, how are we going to remedy the situation? How are we going to fix it? How are we going to make it right?

A far greater philosopher than I once said: “It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

That whole and painful truth is, now, that there is nothing we can do to make it right.
The situation is, in a word, hopeless.

Those before us locked us into this ugly conundrum, where no choice we make can matter. Like it or not, the choice has been for far to long, which evil will we pick. Like it or not, the vast majority of our fellow man is too selfish, stupid, or malicious to recognize that. We are now on automatic pilot. There is no way to reverse our course.

No choice we make now can reverse the evil. No checkbox on the ballot will fix things. No vote we cast will restore just, legal, constitutional government. It just won’t.

Any evil we choose only perpetuates itself. Any choice we make beyond that at the ballot box does not matter to anyone other than ourselves. Meanwhile, everyone keeps telling us that things just keep getting better and better.

As many have said, jokingly: “If voting could change anything, they’d make it illegal.”

But there is hope. The machine of government can only be strained for so long. It can only continue to debase the currency for so long. It can only continue to oppress people for so long. Despite the vicious cycle of evil vs. evil every 2 years, the machine will begin to break down. Probably economically first. Then, as control starts slipping away, the true nature of the beast will be revealed – in the form of capricious power, used at whim. More and more control will be asserted, until, at the very end, the choice will be between a flailing and failing prison state, and some sort of revolution – intellectual, political, or violent. I cannot say.

That’s the brightest future we can look forward to: That someday, probably sooner than later, something’s going to break.

That’s not much of a hope. Things are going to get much, much worse before they get even the slightest bit better. That hope, summarized, is that somewhere, down the road, some group of people will have to make a choice between the light at the end of the tunnel, and the darkness midway through.

Between then and now, our choices are evil and evil. For myself, I'll take this time to prepare, hold my noses and vote based on who gives us the most time for this preparation. I'll buy gold and silver. I'll buy guns. I'll privacy-proof my communications. Make plans to move through the nation without detection. I would ask that anyone who is able do the same. But most importantly, teach. Teach everyone we can reach, anyone who can possibly hear us, WHY our choices are between evil and evil. Teach them HOW we got to this point. Teach them to oppose, with cold mercilessness, the tyranny that selfishness and compassion and tyrannical power exercised for the good of your neighbor, for any reason, can bring.

Because someday, hopefully, the people we teach will be in a position to make that choice I talked about earlier.

Until then, we can only hold our noses.
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Found online. Pretty much mirrors my own thoughts. Comments?

Adrian

well it's a lot more coherent, thought out and eloquent than most partisan journo's you guys have the misfortune to be burdened with

BUT

"Should we hold our noses and vote for socialized medicine, open borders, massive welfare, failed and evil victim disarmament, punish-the-successful economics, and appeasement-based foreign policy simply because the alternative is hostile to our values?"

socialised medicine, a welfare state, private disarmament and tax those who ar ebetter off more has tended to not do us in the UK too much trouble.

as for the open borders. this argument slays me partly because most of america was built by foreign labour but primarilly because unless you're living on a desolate reservation somewhere, you're descended from an immigrant no matter hopw american you might feel.


another problem i have with the guys argument is that for all his writing, he never seems to go anywhere in my opinion.

it's a decent piece and again, much more rational and readable than the plethora of crap that gets c&p'ed on a politics forum i post.

An interesting read, though a bit too fatalist imo, in the way that I believe it's the people that have lost hope, not the situation that his hopeless. And people have lost hope because they are not informed, or don't get themselves informed properly.

For example : "Should we hold our noses and spend our precious agent-of-change vote on a third party that we must, honestly, acknowledge cannot win at any state or federal level, simply because we wish a conscience free from the knowledge that we voted for ANY party hostile to our values?"

That is a little naïve. To change things significantly you don't need a third party to win. In a politically bipolar country such as the US, bringing a third party up to a 5% of votes would already be a major political revolution, as both the GOP and Democrats would need to fight for these 5%, seek coallitions etc... The 5% would then get more "airplay", more visibility, and most probably voters, until it reaches 10%, starts winning a seat or two etc... it's a virtuous circle. That's why if you feel closer to a small party you should not hesitate to vote for it.

Stretching both GOP and Democrat policies to "slavery" is wrong, and wont help in getting everyone to work together, believe and trust one another. However bad I can consider politicians, especially in the US and especially the current administration, I'm confident the vast majority of the people engaged in politics are honest and dedicated without any cruel intention.
The problem imo is more how someone gets on top and what are the means needed to get there rather than the ideology, and what it's worth, of any party. The whole political system needs a big breath of fresh air. The only way for the "big machines" to even think of opening and renewing their own institution is to realise that they need to.

That won't happen until a third party breaks their confort, which is much easier and accessible than the people are led to think.


Ponrauil

This morning I was wishing for some evils to choose between. Our state level elections had options, but the local elections were all

Canditate #1
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Seriously--every local district election had ONE candidate on the ballot. Maybe a choice for the lesser of two evils is still better than no choice.

Is that even legal?


Ponrauil

You are (more than) a little despairing of the situation, but raise a few good points -

Do we deserve a situation where the two parties both seem lacking in clear, absolute moreal values? Does this simply stem from the fact that the US population is largely centrist, despite the divisive cosmetic differences?

How large a difference can the government make to the everyday lives of ordinary citizen? Can they really drive the changes in society or merely react and manage the apparatus of the state?

Are things so bad they can't be turned around by a good leader? Far from my cup of tea, but Reagan undoubtedly rallied national pride to an unprecedented degree, just a decade or so after Nixon.

If there are enough good, ordinary people left, and I'm sure there are, the US will be just fine in the long run.

you want to hear something even more depressing on a national scale in the UK.

around 60% of the constituencies we vote for in the UK general election would need a record swings that have never been seen to change the party in that seat.

to be very blunt, 6 out of 10 seats in the commons are already decided before an election has even been announced.

It is still the people who decide that rather than the system.

Are you really honestly surprised in 60% of the country, longstanding party affiliations withstand any honest appraisal of candidates or policies? A working class suburb is always going to be far more likely to vote on the left and the home counties far more on the right.

To change that situation would require truly amazingly charismatic or brilliant candidates.

and the people are uninformed idiots when it comes to politics for the most part.

your mileage may vary but i think it says alot that the % of people in my politics classes at uni that don't plan on voting are above the national average.

You are painting a no-win picture here. Study politics and you will become disengaged from the system. Don't study politics and you are too ill informed to cast a useful vote.