Let’s take a step back from discussing this Total Freedom Act.  Maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.  Maybe it is sounding a bit too crazy to you…imagining a life without government.  So let’s assume (as I have argued) that the vast majority of Americans would not use the Total Freedom Act.  So let’s look at the democracy we actually do have.  Let’s discuss the very idea of American Democracy.

Maybe you believe in the process.  Maybe you think I was being too harsh or cynical in the “To the Ruling Elite” chapter.  After all, it is purely American to have complete faith in democracy.  These are our elected officials, right?  They are accountable to us, right?  America is the shining example of democracy, right?  So naturally those of us who take part in American politics (either as a voter, campaigner, activist, protester, candidate, or politician) are proudly taking part in what we believe is a meaningful endeavor that will surely have an impact.  Why else are we doing it?  Liberal, Conservative, Independent, Tea Party, Libertarian, Green, Anarchist…we should all be able to agree that it is completely possible to achieve our goals through the political process. 

I really want to believe in this.  But if I’m being completely honest, it does bother me a bit that, throughout our history, both Democrats and Republicans constantly seem to make generic promises that sound good pre-election and then get into office only to ignore or explain away everything they had just promised.  Maybe we’ve occasionally seen them deviate from this course only to stumble around in their own stupidity or naivety, but soon enough the “party-machine” seems to come along in order to get them back in line.

I don’t mean to be cynical, because theoretically I know how we can solve our problems through Washington’s institutions.  But sometimes it does seem like game is rigged and that we, personally, have almost no impact as citizens.  Doesn’t it sometimes seem like just that these days – a game?  I’ve been paying close attention for a least a decade or two and of course I’ve noticed that the two parties do, in fact, look and sound very different from each other.  But then when you look at the results…the actual policy decisions…the system just seems to hum along, uninterrupted, whoever is in power.  That might be all well-and-good, but the problem is that it seems to be not so much “humming” anymore but spinning out of control and crashing.

Indeed, we often say that politics is a game, or theater, or a show.  I’ve been thinking lately that American politics is like a sport.  This is, without a doubt, the best analogy.  When I think about sports, I remember my childhood in central Wisconsin, home of the Green Bay Packers.  In this part of the world, when the Packers win a game on Sunday, everything is right with the world.  When they lose, we are barely able to face Monday.  As I watch elections sway one way or the other, I’ve noticed this same element in politics as well.  Regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in power, half of the country seems to feel that everything is great and the other half feels like the world is upside down for a few years.  In fairness, make that 25% and 25% of the country, because the other half of the country doesn’t even care to vote. 

I remember what it is like at a Packer game.  I’ve only been to one Packer game as a young child, by the way, because it is really hard to get tickets.  But from far back in the cheap seats on that cold afternoon, I remember that even my Dad’s loudest shouts had no real impact on our team’s performance.  I don’t even remember who won that game, to be honest, just that they played the Chicago Bears.  I guess, over the long-term, whether or not our favorite team wins or loses in sports, our lives are not actually changed.  Maybe our mood shifts a bit when our favorite team wins, but we have to admit that nothing really changes in our lives other than the fact that we just paid a lot of money for the thrilling experience of going to the game.   

What does this have to do with politics?  I hope, and I certainly want to believe, that my experience as a Packer fan is not a direct analogy for US politics.  Certainly, we must believe that our lives are directly affected when one party wins or the other, right?  I’m sure you’ve noticed meaningful change in your life when the right party is in power, right? 

Let’s think about the Bush years, for example.  All that military spending kept us safe, aside from the horrible tragedy of 9/11 of course.  Yet if I’m being completely honest, I wasn’t too worried about Al Qaida hitting my neighborhood because I didn’t see anything around that they’d care about in my neighborhood.  I actually wasn’t so scared of Al Qaida at all after the initial shock of 9/11 wore off.  I hope you don’t find that to be offensive for any reason, I just want to be honest about my personal feelings (though I certainly respect yours if they are different).  But as I was saying, maybe if you live in a symbolically-important area, then maybe you felt much safer because of the War on Terror.

Bush also overthrew Saddam and put him to death.  I guess I should have been bothered that the power-hungry dictator was still in charge in Iraq.  But to be completely honest, it didn’t bother me that much or affect my real life because there are a lot of brutal dictators around the world and I try not to lose too much sleep over it.  But I don’t want to say that you shouldn’t care a lot about this because perhaps this did have a direct effect on your real life somehow. 

At least, during the Bush presidency, there were no blow-jobs in the Oval Office that we know of.  That was really bothering me in the late 1990’s.  Well, the act itself wouldn’t have bothered me too much I guess.  What was really bothering me was hearing all about every embarrassing detail in the media for what seemed like years and years.  Still, other than having to deal with what I see when watching TV (this is starting to sound a lot like a Packer game), I’m still having a hard time figuring out how any of these events in American politics affected my real life. 

There must surely have been ways that Bush changed our real lives.  I know he was talking about overturning Roe v. Wade, though he didn’t quite pull that one off.  Well, when I think about that a bit longer, maybe it doesn’t really bother me that much that people who I don’t even know sometimes decide to have an abortion as a response to life circumstances that don’t involve me and that I don’t exactly understand.  I mean, I would never want my wife or daughter to do such a thing, but then again I really don’t think they would.  But I can understand if this is something you worry about.  Besides, this change didn’t actually happen anyway.  Sorry to bring it up. 

Didn’t the Bush wars make gas cheaper?  It would make sense, since practically our entire military was over there occupying oil-rich Iraq.  I did wonder though, quietly to myself at the time, how much of my tax money went to pay for that enormous effort.  I mean, when you factor all of that into what we actually end up paying for fuel, was gas really any cheaper at all?  I don’t think so.  Then again, didn’t gas prices get really high by the end of his presidency anyway?  So we can forget that argument.  I did hear something about the Oil companies and the commodities traders doing really well during that time though, so if you work for them or have family who does I can certainly understand how the Bush Administration has had a real and positive impact on your real life.  If I’m being completely honest, when I think of the Bush years, I’m sorry to say that I can’t remember anything that the government did to change my real life for the better in any real way.  I don’t want to over-simplify like that.  I’m sure I’m overlooking something.  Maybe you could point it out and, in that case, I stand corrected.  But off the top of my head I really can’t think of it.

That’s not to say that government doesn’t concern me or give me a lot to worry about.  What I worry most about when it comes to our government is the enormous and constantly growing deficit.  I do worry that, if these guys can’t get themselves under control, they will completely wreck the economy.  They will get us so far into debt that, when it eventually becomes clear that they can’t pay back creditors, they will destroy the dollar and we will suddenly be asked to pay enormous taxes just to pay for all of their previous wasteful spending.  That could have a scary and very real impact on our lives someday.  Republicans are always promising that they will reverse this trend of ever-increasing spending and an ever-increasing debt.  Yet it still just continues to grow, sometimes even at a faster pace, even when they are in power.  But since they say that they are the party of less government and less spending, I guess we are supposed to have no doubt that they are being honest about this and intend to do just that in the future.  Right?

Now don’t even get me started on the Democrats.  They don’t seem to even understand the benefits of business and free market economics.  Instead, they get in there and enact so many socialist policies that it’s truly amazing our economy is still running at all.  Just look at Obamacare.  I think that at some point in the future there were going to be some changes that I think were going to change something about some people’s health insurance policies if Republicans don’t end up reversing them or something (but I can’t exactly remember what those changes really are).  I did hear that we will be required to buy health insurance.  That’s right, we will be required by government force to take our hard-earned money and give it to insurance companies, who keep raising our premiums and gouging us further each year!  That’s not right.  Even though this is really messed up, I don’t know how bothered I am about this healthcare bill in contrast to everything else going on.  But I do know that the cost of healthcare is ridiculous (and going up so fast that I don’t know how anybody can keep up).  I just think people ought to be able to go to the doctor when they are sick and not face the threat of going bankrupt as a result.  Sometimes it seems like the problem is not so much government-run healthcare (which of course we still don’t have), but the greedy insurance companies, hospitals, and ambulances charging such ridiculous prices when we are guilty only of becoming sick, injured, and therefore defenseless.  I don’t actually know if blaming the whole problem on some kind of socialist takeover makes all that much sense.  But the problems with our healthcare system could easily fill this book from cover-to-cover, so I’ll put that problem aside for now. 

I can tell you I was really bothered, though, by all the money that went to bailing out the investment banks, bailing out General Motors, etc.  As I said, I believe in Capitalism, and in basic free-market economics.  So, if we’re going to call this system “capitalist”, then it would seem that when a company runs itself into bankruptcy…then it should fail.  I’d like to believe that Republicans would never have done such a thing.  But then again, they did approve the first bank bailout just before Obama was elected.  I guess they had no choice, though, because the bankers were saying that the economy was on the verge of collapse.  But either way, I still can’t really tell whether this had any impact on our real lives.  I don’t work on Wall Street or for General Motors.  So I wouldn’t have minded seeing those bastards go out of business (especially those criminal, elitist little pricks on Wall Street).  But maybe you directly benefited from Wall Street or work for General Motors.  In that case, I can certainly see where this bailout affected your life directly and I’m sorry if what I said sounded selfish or offensive to you.

Come to think of it, I don’t actually see a lot of difference between the reality of life under the Bush Administration and life under the Obama Administration.  We just want government out of our lives, right?  We want all those programs which don’t make sense to be cut, right?  We want our taxes cut, right?  We want to believe that if we can get the right people into power, they will make this happen.  They will cut all the waste, close departments, and cut wasteful spending.  If we can just get the right people elected I know that this change is coming!  We can find virtuous politicians who don’t want only to boost their own power, who don’t want only to funnel our tax money into organizations they are connected to, who will not act on a quid-pro-quo basis, who will put their personal ambitions aside and think about the good of the people for once.  God, lately this is getting harder and harder to believe. 

But let’s try some positive thinking.  Surely we can find enough of these incorruptible politicians to form a majority and actually make it happen, right?  And they will find a way to raise all the money they need to advertise, navigate all the corrupt games in Washington, and make real change happen from within a system that seems more and more corrupt by the day.  Sure, it’s possible.  It’s just that, over these past two hundred years or so, we’ve seen only the opposite: bigger government, more corruption, less freedom, more interference, more power concentration and, at least in recent decades, less improvement in the lives of regular people.  

American Democracy is the best in the world and this is exactly what the people are fighting for, right?  It just takes a while, right?  We have to stay at it and not become cynical.  We cannot give-in to the belief that it is all just a game to distract us for a few moments while they continue screwing us over each day, each week, and each month with no apparent end in sight.  Right? 

The reality is that I can’t remember a damn thing that came out of Washington in my lifetime that has really changed anything about my actual life for the better.  Maybe you can.  In that case, I guess I’m not seeing something.  Maybe I’m biased or maybe I just have bad luck.