September 2004

Breaking Out of the Echo Chamber: How to Get Our Country Out of the Miserably Repetitive Four-Year Election Cycle

Not a week goes by without Grandpa calling Godzilla to say, "I'm not voting this year" or, "Maybe I can just not vote for Kerry." Godzilla is just about sick of it. Grandpa's problem is that he watches Now with Bill Moyers every week, and this summer's theme seemed to be "Why the system is corrupt and why is the deck stacked against it ever changing?"

We elitists at Evil Robots all know this already, but some times the fervor of bipartisan debate, we forget the smaller details that lie festering beneath the fray. Campaign finance, special interest influence, secret back-door deals, and a spineless media prop up the two-party mess we glorify every four years, with little for the average voter to do. That is, other than simply not voting.

Boo-hoo, right? These are not new problems in American politics, but since we're members of the liberal elite, it's our job to figure out how we can get out of this mess.

What exactly is this mess? An uninformed public.

In the past, we chose to blamed the media. Fox News's non-coverage of events, CNN's impish impersonation of Fox, local television station's obsession with crime scene pictures, and print media's desperate competition with sensational cable news stories. It's all a big goddamn mess, but it's not like real news is not out there for the reading. No, it's there on the news wires and on B6, and in foreign coverage. The media's only partially to blame.

The willing participants in this are our fellow Americans, those who read piece-of-shit weekly news magazines and cable news networks. By unquestioningly absorbing minimalist coverage of events and issues, as well as being caught up in pop hysterics, they do not see how the people of America are being robbed blind by business as usual.

More people are willing to accept the choices given to them than challenge the legitimacy of those choices. Most people believe what they are told. Frankly, it fills us with unbelievable outrage. Why would one not to have a say in their future? Especially the vast majority of Americans who famously complain about the bums in Washington? Well, then throw them out. And maybe do a little research while your at it. Become informed! As Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Toqueville both said, American democracy is dependant upon a well informed public. Without being informed, we allowed ourselves to be duped, thus eventually giving our government carte blanche to run the nation as if it were a fascist oligarchy while still, technically, being a democratic republic.

When was the last time you debated issues and facts with someone? Did you step outside your personal echo chamber, or attempt to draw someone out of theirs? It's fascinating when it happens. Just this weekend, Grandpa discussed politics with someone who obviously had rarely thought about the sound bites that made up her opinion of John Kerry and George Bush. Instead of talking to a person who understood the issues, it was as if he was listening to a RNC news ticker - all spin and no substance. When pressed to defend any of the talking points against actual news, the test subject backed into a farcical corner of post-modern relativism - the last defense of the weak argument. This has been happening to Evil Robots staffers for years.

Godzilla has experienced the same basic situation on numerous occasions. The worst are those he encounters at work, where if he spoke too much truth to power he could easily lose his job. He hates working for republicans. In his line of work he's seen many public policy decisions based on pure ideology without a shred of actual evidence or an appeal to fairness. Republicans play ruthless politics, and are especially able to do so because the rank-and-file act so unquestionably. Godzilla also encounters the kind of people that complain about paying taxes without really knowing what their taxes provide. And every time he hears that we had to invade Iraq as a response to 9/11, he comes that much closer to having a stroke. Invading Iraq as a result of being attacked by mostly Saudi and Egyptian terrorists based out of Pakistan is like kicking the dog when you've had a bad day at work.

It's hard goddamn work being a couple of elitists, but it's our duty as Americans to make people smarter than the establishment wants them to be. But what are we to do? We can't force people to read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and listen to the BBC World Service! Instead, we have to deal with the results of intellectual laziness, in our faces and in election poll results.

We cannot do this alone. As a reader of Evil Robots, you may be well on your way to agitating a political revolution in your life-time. You need to be well read, listen to media watch-dog groups, and know what your US Senators voted on last week. (On that last point, Godzilla does not count because he lives in DC, which has no representation.) Most of all, you need to dedicate your life to break down political party loyalty in every partisan you meet.

Yes, being a true citizen requires some work, god forbid. But remember what the GOP propaganda machine constantly reminds us- that freedom isn't free. But we mean that rights come with responsibilities. These responsibilities mean you do your part. Your part, fundamentally, is to be an informed voter. The odds seem stacked against the informed voter these days, but imagine if more people refused to purchase the USA Today on grounds that it contained no real news. Or imagine if more people challenged FOXNews on their version of facts. Imagine if people actually cared enough about the future their children will inherit to put a little effort into it.

You think this country is divided now? Just wait until we get people to break up into their own, more representative political parties. No more will sensible economists be forced to join forces with bible-thumping anti-abortionists. Organized Labor can stand on it's own with candidates that always fight for the rights of working Americans. There will always be a Republican and Democratic Party in America, but they don't always have to be the only ones to be elected to the House and Senate, or the only people invited to the Presidential Debates.

We don't view this as an impossibility. At it's core, the Democratic party is a coalition of many progressive factions. The GOP, on some level, is also a coalition, but one that is susceptible enough to it's own propaganda that any internal dissent is easily squashed. The Republican party has a true vested interest in an uniformed electorate.

As long as we allow people to be complacent in their ignorance, we will also allow the miserable two-party system to represent only the rich and influential. It's it only by embracing your elitism - you are elite because you know more, you see farther, and you can smell the shit they are shovelin' - can you, and everyone like you, save the world from ignorant the spin-spitters who accept the terrible choices they are given every four years.

Don't be fooled into thinking that "elitist" is a bad term. There's nothing wrong with being smarter than everybody else. After all, who would you rather have in charge, a well-meaning innovative elitist like FDR, or a race-bating faux-populist like George W. Bush? Under which way of thinking did America achieve it's greatest success as a nation?