Sunday, May 10, 2009
GULLIBILITY OF VOTERS
More than 50 years ago, H. L. Mencken wrote: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.” Mencken also wrote: “No one in this world has ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
While one might chafe a bit at the cynicism of Mencken’s humorous truisms, it would be difficult to dispute their validity.
Perhaps one might say: “Never overestimate the intelligence of the American voter.” Or conversely, “Never underestimate the ignorance or the gullibility of the American voter.” Time and again we have observed this to be true. The question before us: Will this prove again to be the case with President Obama’s agenda of change?
This amateur pundit has written several times about the infinite capacity of the American voters, and Oklahoma voters in particular, to vote against their own best interest as citizens and consumers. Regularly voters go to the polls and elect public officials who do not serve them or their peers, but openly take positions and sponsor measures detrimental to the welfare of the common citizen. This continues to be the case.
It must be difficult to understand that the working person’s interests and those of the wealthy are not always congruent. It must be difficult to comprehend when politicians are serving their donors rather than the public. Even when faced with the ever-recurring facts, people fail to comprehend the power of lobbyists in comparison with the power of the voters.
The average voter, who normally is a worker, will vote for candidates who offer “workers’ comp reform” as a subterfuge to undermine his own rights in favor of his employer. The average citizen-consumer may have his suspicions of lawyers nurtured and expanded to the extent that he will vote for people who will fix the laws to deny him his day in court when wronged by businesses, medical providers, or insurance companies.
Does anyone remember Harry and Louise? These were the conversational TV ads sponsored by the health insurance companies that scuttled President Bill Clinton’s universal health insurance initiative. The gullibility of the American voters to such attack advertising sponsored by those with monetary interests adverse to the public interest is alarming.
Since President Obama is seriously pushing the health coverage part of his agenda, there are already advertisements of the same nature as Harry and Louise appearing on television. Sponsored by the insurance companies, these ads attempt to frighten the public with the notion that a “government bureaucrat” will be interfering with the decisions of the patient and the doctor.
Actually, it is now the private HMO or health insurance company bureaucrat who is interfering most with the doctor and the patient’s treatment decisions. Who has not seen those horror stories or even experienced such frustrations personally?
There is another quote from H. L. Mencken which says: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Such were the tactics used by the past republican administration after 9/11 to justify pre-emptive foreign wars, to keep the American people placid while their civil rights were compromised, and to justify torture of captives against the law of the signed Geneva Convention.
Now we see over and over the specter of socialism raised to frighten people about Mr. Obama’s efforts to save the economy, change a tax system which favors the rich, and bring needed health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured. The monetary supporters of the republicans are escalating their efforts to picture Mr. Obama to the voter as a big spending profligate, ruining the country by taxing the rich and the corporations who move their jobs and their bank accounts out of the country.
In this state and all over the country, the public needs to wise up to what is transpiring in the political arena. Average voters must look out for their own interests. Those with money to donate to campaigns and put lobbyists in Capitol halls are unlikely to be trying to benefit the common person.
The political game has been one of symbiosis of moneyed special interests and politicians. That game needs to change.
Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
While one might chafe a bit at the cynicism of Mencken’s humorous truisms, it would be difficult to dispute their validity.
Perhaps one might say: “Never overestimate the intelligence of the American voter.” Or conversely, “Never underestimate the ignorance or the gullibility of the American voter.” Time and again we have observed this to be true. The question before us: Will this prove again to be the case with President Obama’s agenda of change?
This amateur pundit has written several times about the infinite capacity of the American voters, and Oklahoma voters in particular, to vote against their own best interest as citizens and consumers. Regularly voters go to the polls and elect public officials who do not serve them or their peers, but openly take positions and sponsor measures detrimental to the welfare of the common citizen. This continues to be the case.
It must be difficult to understand that the working person’s interests and those of the wealthy are not always congruent. It must be difficult to comprehend when politicians are serving their donors rather than the public. Even when faced with the ever-recurring facts, people fail to comprehend the power of lobbyists in comparison with the power of the voters.
The average voter, who normally is a worker, will vote for candidates who offer “workers’ comp reform” as a subterfuge to undermine his own rights in favor of his employer. The average citizen-consumer may have his suspicions of lawyers nurtured and expanded to the extent that he will vote for people who will fix the laws to deny him his day in court when wronged by businesses, medical providers, or insurance companies.
Does anyone remember Harry and Louise? These were the conversational TV ads sponsored by the health insurance companies that scuttled President Bill Clinton’s universal health insurance initiative. The gullibility of the American voters to such attack advertising sponsored by those with monetary interests adverse to the public interest is alarming.
Since President Obama is seriously pushing the health coverage part of his agenda, there are already advertisements of the same nature as Harry and Louise appearing on television. Sponsored by the insurance companies, these ads attempt to frighten the public with the notion that a “government bureaucrat” will be interfering with the decisions of the patient and the doctor.
Actually, it is now the private HMO or health insurance company bureaucrat who is interfering most with the doctor and the patient’s treatment decisions. Who has not seen those horror stories or even experienced such frustrations personally?
There is another quote from H. L. Mencken which says: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Such were the tactics used by the past republican administration after 9/11 to justify pre-emptive foreign wars, to keep the American people placid while their civil rights were compromised, and to justify torture of captives against the law of the signed Geneva Convention.
Now we see over and over the specter of socialism raised to frighten people about Mr. Obama’s efforts to save the economy, change a tax system which favors the rich, and bring needed health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured. The monetary supporters of the republicans are escalating their efforts to picture Mr. Obama to the voter as a big spending profligate, ruining the country by taxing the rich and the corporations who move their jobs and their bank accounts out of the country.
In this state and all over the country, the public needs to wise up to what is transpiring in the political arena. Average voters must look out for their own interests. Those with money to donate to campaigns and put lobbyists in Capitol halls are unlikely to be trying to benefit the common person.
The political game has been one of symbiosis of moneyed special interests and politicians. That game needs to change.
Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
