I do not understand

[avevale_intelligencer]

Somebody voted.

Somebody voted for a party which believes there should be no limit to how little an employer can pay its hirelings, especially if they are sick and have special needs; that people who are sick and have special needs should be left to fend for themselves with no benefits and on a wage on which, by definition, nobody can afford to live.

Somebody voted for a party which maintains simultaneously that a job is the only measure of human worth and that a job is a favour generously bestowed upon the lower orders by the upper classes, and which enforces those definitions on all of us and always has.

Somebody voted for a party whose members want to keep all the money and all the power in the hands of the top fraction of one per cent of the population, and do not give a damn what happens to the rest.

I do not understand how anyone can vote for such a party. I do not understand how there can be one ordinary person walking on this earth who would ever vote for such a party. Even when the only alternative is an alternative in name only, as now, to vote for that alternative should be a point of pride and honour for any person living who is not already part of the ruling élite.

There is no way that the true nature of this party can not be apparent to anyone who pays even the marginal degree of attention that I do to current affairs. There is no way that anyone can be unaware of that for which they have chosen to cast their vote.

I do not understand. I don't think I ever will.

It makes it very hard for me to feel human, sometimes. Because whatever kind of reasoning, whatever pattern of thought, allows people to choose to support such a party, I am not clever enough, not strong enough, to reach it.

Comments

The press

[lewis-p-bear.livejournal.com]

You will just have to start applying logic filters to the trash spawned by the media.

[wolfette]

I once worked (briefly) with someone who actually held those views. Single mothers were scum who shouldn't be allowed to claim benefits - even if they were divorced single mothers whose partners had deserted them. Unemployed people were scum who just "didn't try hard enough to find a job". Disabled people were scum who should have been put down at birth rather than be a burden on the state.

It felt like karma when her husband walked out on her (for a younger, prettier model) and left her to try to cope with their "quiver full" of children by herself, giving her no child support. Of course the children were all too young for her to work full time without child support - which she couldn't afford to pay for on her salary.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

I think I know exactly how you feel. Even if it's on a different issue, and one with rather less overall impact, I've spent the past two days going "how can you think that? how can you say such things and claim to be a moral person? do we belong to the same goddamned SPECIES, mister?"

[eoforyth.livejournal.com]

We really need a 'None of the above' ticky box at times, just to show our displeasure at the choices offered.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Directly adjacent to your post on my f-list, my friend cellio writes that the d'var Torah (analysis of the week's Torah reading) she wrote this time last year has been posted on rj.org (RJ here = Reform Judaism), and I find it strangely though maybe not directly relevant. Here are some excerpts that I hope are coherent; I've not bothered with ellipses because there would be so many of them. Click on the link for the whole d'var.
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God told Moshe to send twelve scouts in to check out the land, and it ended in failure -- ten of them gave a bad report, and even though the other two disagreed, they were out-voted. The people listened to the ten, concluding that this whole "promised land" venture was a bad idea, and God followed up by saying that they'd get what they asked for, to stay in the wilderness.

What went wrong here?

The portion begins by telling us who these twelve men were. They are among the leaders of their tribes; the word the torah uses is "nasi", prince. It's not that they didn't have good intentions; of course they wanted to do a good job. But there is a natural tension between what the mission needs from them and what their constituents need from them, and they have been chosen as tribe leaders, not as individuals. Naturally their concerns for their tribes are going to win out.

This kind of conflict of interest is common. People are complex; they have multiple allegiances and multiple factors that can affect what they say. When you listen to people you have to consider all that and try to tease out what's really driving them.

Before we make up our minds about the facts, we need to try to understand the perspectives of the people who are reporting those "facts" to us.
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Shabbat shalom!

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

The thing that makes voting for the "opponent in name only" worth doing is that, when the side that will do the same thing but keep its mouth shut about it wins repeatedly, it makes the other side shut its mouth more, as the only possible way to keep up. When the other side shuts its mouth, it loses the opportunity to brainwash people further. You may only get real change, and only slight change at that, after repeated cycles of this, but for real change to occur, the first thing that has to happen is that the people who say all this is right need to lose to the people who say all this is wrong but do it anyway.

[allan doodes (from livejournal.com)]

I can think of three reasons why people might vote for a party like that.

1 - Some people believe that that is they the deity - however they interpret that term - wants it to be. Which, judging from nature is true.

2 - Some people buy the crap about how they too can rise to the top - see all the rags-to-riches stories we are continually being fed by the papers and TV. I recall a teacher in a Primeval episode asking one (female) pupil "And what if you don't win Britain's Got Talent?" Fiction agreed, but there is a good reason why those you speak of also talk about freedom to achieve, even as they rig the education system to make it impossible.

3 - For some people, freedom to make one's own choices is genuinely frightening. How much that is a cultural thing, and how much a deeper problem, I cannot say. Certainly, human societies of all types have been prone to hierarchy. The groups you are moaning about also push order. It is worth noting that, historically speaking, rebellions are more likely against changes - even when they are clear improvements - to society than against existing poor conditions. Modern communications may mean that people are more aware of how their conditions compare with other people's, which is causing troubles for governments (see Arab Spring, the latest in a LONG line of such), but this is a very modern trend, and counter to previous tendencies.

Not everyone fits any of the above descriptions, you certainly don't, nor do I (I hope), nor, I suspect, do any of your other readers. But there are an awful lot of people who do fit one or another of the above descriptions.

Is the problem solvable? I sure hope so, and think it worth trying. But I am not certain.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Firstly, because people vote for the party that they think will do the best for them.

Secondly, there is often a 'dealbreaker' policy. For me, at the last election, I did not vote Labour and still would not because of their law and order policies.

[michael cule (from livejournal.com)]

People are more easily moved to fear than to hope.

People are willing to believe that life is a zero-sum game and it is impossible for everybody to get enough stuff. As long as the people who go short aren't them or theirs they will accept a system that is monstrously unjust.

People are easily flattered and like to be told that 'our party is the party of Common Sense' which will follow their knee-jerk reactions to situations.

People often vote out of sheer habit and don't like to have to make complicated decisions.

To summarise: people are a problem.

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

Some people are in the top fraction of one per cent and they vote. Other people think that, if that fraction is expanded just a "little" bit, they might get in, and they vote. Some people vote because their newspaper tells them to; some because they always have; and some because they *don't like* the other option(s).

A lot don't vote. Which means that, under our system, they implicitly support whoever gets in.


The other point, which isn't mine, but Gilbert's (Iolanthe), is that it doesn't mater which lot get in, the game goes on exactly the same, because they're all politicians, so they all vote like politicians, and hong the voters.

Also, pace Jim Hacker, it isn't the poiticians who actually make the decisions and frame the poicies, it's the Civil Servants.


Sleep well