Window Shopping at the Voting Booth
I was having a drink at my new favourite bar today and got so much more for my money than just a decaf capuccino. The waiter was a young dude with a fresh tatoo on his arm and, as I was about to find out, rather bad at negotiating. Unenthusiastic about volonteering at a polling station, he didn’t even feel like voting in the first place. It happened at the last local elections where we finally got a new administration that invests lots of money into maintaining green areas so there are no dark corners left to get high when the need outweighs your possibilities. For better or worse, it no longer applies to me. I rarely get seriously shitfaced anyway.
The young man’s father was supposedly adamant to make him go and vote for a specific candidate. When he refused yet again, dad offered him a pitiful bribe of five Euros to do it, so sonny boy obeyed. I had to surpress laughing because I couldn’t believe my ears.
It was hardly a surprise- bribes and blackmail are a foulproof mechanism that enables local nationalist elites to stay in positions of power and just like the waiter, we gladly obey. The laughable part about it was how little it took to make him do as you please, literally. His vote had a single-digit price, a perfect metaphor of how low people are prepared to sink just to stay afloat.
It was a gap between two views of society. The father was conscious of tribalism as a vital part of politics for bottom-feeders like him. For sonny boy, it was a yet another chore that he just wanted to get over with and go back to whichever form of time-wasting. You can’t even accuse him of ignorance. It’s something much worse, nonchalance that grows into compliance and before you know it, we’re right back at the root of the problem. In a situation where elections are merely a disguise for body count in terms of integrity, flaws of representative democracy light up like a traffic light in the desert.
Whichever way you turn it, inevitably we go back to Socrates whose criticism of democracy feels as relevant as ever. If votes can be bought for loose change, we can’t expect a true change. It would imply a shift in ideals we look up to. In communities where these plinths are occupied by crooks, war criminals and demagogues, that’s a recipe for political disaster.
Society is a giant cow whose tit they squeeze till it runs dry. When it inevitably happens, they can count on the waiter from my bar to help them hold on to power. He’s merely a symptom of this terminal illness. Since so many are either disillusioned or distracted by peripheral short-term dopamine kicks, what we call democracy is reduced to an anchorless ship climbing up a tide that’s about to crash into the cliffs and there’s no one at the steering wheel.
Unless we stop treating ballot boxes like trashcans, every effort is futile. Bottom feeders aren’t voters, they are fighting for the status quo because changes rock the boat which is something to be avoided at all costs. If you’re in a first class cabin, you might be risking a downgrade and that’s more than they can take.
Not even controversial issues like abortion are necessary to get you to the polling station because your mind is like a hamster wheel full of mental junk food. That’s why conservative politics has such a loyal following. It’s enough to have a convincing personality and you’re good to go. And your policy? What’s that? They’re confident voters who will stay put because loyalty trumps integrity in their book.
Their oponents are ideologically inconsistent which considerably weakens their position. If your approach to politics is too analytical, you’ll always find a reason not to endorse a candidate. It’s much more difficult to be a leader on the left side of the isle because in their voting pool, you’ll rarely see swimmers that require a handful of cash to sell their trust to someone that can turn it into a hand grenade. It’s the other way around. If you want to buy those people, they’ll ask for a truckload of cash instead . A political flea market where you pay double if you listen to your nose instead to your wallet.
We have a local saying that the future belongs to the young. Well, if means my reluctant waiter might end up on top of the ladder, it’s not exactly something to look forward to. Rather a Kafkian dystopia that’s looming in the wings. Ubiquity is the enemy of reason. If you’re too exposed to news about stuff feeding your disillusionment, you’ll stop paying attention to all the injustices rampant like Californian wildfires and give up. Yet I can’t be an activist all the time. It’s exhausting, physically and mentally. It requires enthusiasm even when you’re at the end of your tether.
Certain goals are just wishful thinking and you’ve got to be able to reconcile with that. In fact, you should be grateful: wishful thinking is the opposite of disillusionment and despair. There must be many more who’ll gladly support even the worst of demagogues as long as he’s on their side of the isle. But it would be a mistake to dismiss them and throw away an opportunity to make them question their views. You’ll certainly run into those applauding to the man who’s ideologically so vigilant he’ll pay you to vote for somebody you don’t care for.
However, it’s this belief into your political nonchalance that keeps us chained to the ball that’s stuck in place instead of moving forward. To be more precise, it’s the fact that he’s right. We’re too tired from doing nothing to stand up and prove him wrong. Yes, my friends. Believe it or not, it’s our fault. I can’t blame the reluctant waiter for his attitude.
No one gave him a reason to chase anything more important than skirts. Instead of screaming in our hermetically sealed echo chambers, it’s time to get out and find a common voice. Anything is better than complacency and that’s exactly what we’re getting now. Anything. Not the proverbial kind that’s better than nothing, but the one getting you from nothing to nowhere and beyond.
