Note: It seems that the comment plugin is hopelessly broken. The developer is useless, so I need to find a solution for commenting that is more reliable. For now, it is the basic comment system that comes with WordPress. This summer, I hope to move off the WordPress software (I host my own site), so I’m not going to invest time in a new commenting system for WordPress.
Most discussions about political reform are a way to avoid facing the reality of the people in charge of the system or the system itself. Often, it is a form of escapism where the proposed reform will magically make the people in charge into the sorts of honorable or virtuous people the system demands. Regardless of the political system, reform is an internal operation, performed by the people in charge for the benefit of the people in charge. The reformers always need elite support.
That said, thinking about how the system should be altered in order to serve the ends of society can get at what is wrong with the system. Take voting, for example. American elections are now hopelessly corrupt. The path forward for those not supportive of the ruling class is to protest the whole election. When the votes are rigged and the parties are decreasingly polite fictions, voting is a waste of time. Every vote cast, regardless of the candidate, is for the ruling party.
For most people concerned about this, voting reform would probably start with the companies counting the votes and the voting process. They would want open and accountable voting systems, for example. That way the vote can be compared to actual humans in the district. Maybe the voters would have to present a picture ID in order to vote, which would mean no more mail-in voting. The idea is to reduce the amount of fraud by making it more difficult for the ruling party to commit fraud.
The trouble though is all of those things are just polite ways of saying voter reform means making it harder to vote. The ruling party has always used this claim to justify smashing up the voting system. Democracy, they tell us, is about everyone participating equally in the voting process. That means the system has to be usable by the retarded, the lazy and the disinterested. The only way that can be done is to make the system easy to rig. If the retarded can vote, the imaginary can vote too.
That right there is the point of thinking about voting reform. The honest reformer here must start with the fact that too many people vote. In a democracy, the truth is decided by fifty percent plus one. Although it rarely happens, an election can be decided by one vote, which means the winner is picked by that retarded guy. In a close election, the winner is picked by a handful of the dumbest people. Put another way, in a democracy, the toughest problems are decided by the dumbest people.
Really, what voting reform is about is how to stop the stupid, the crazy and the disinterested from voting. You figure out barriers to put in the way of these people in order to discourage them from trying to vote. Voting is still open to all citizens, as long as they can navigate the voting process. The trouble with this approach is it is not honest about what it means to be a citizen. It says everyone is a citizen with a vote, but in reality, it subtly takes the vote from the undesirable.
Building a system on a lie opens the door for the sorts of people who seek to undermine order so they can plunder society. This is the story of the last century. The drive to open up voting for blacks, for example, was never about bringing blacks into the process so they could have a voice in government. Blacks and black voting were just a cat’s paw for others seeking to undermine the social order. We see the same thing happening now with giving foreigners the right to vote in our elections.
That is what modern voting reform is, when you stop and think about it. One side lies about making it easier to vote, so they can stuff the ballot box. The other side lies about making it fairer, so they can prevent fraud. This is why efforts to fix voting will only make things worse. It is a game built on a lie that encourages both sides to keep lying about their intentions. In a game that rewards the best liars, the people behind the massive election fraud have the advantage, which is why they win.
The real question of voting reform is what sort of person should be participating in the governance of society? When you start from that point, voting reform stops being about rigging the system and about defining citizenship. A citizen is someone who has a stake in the outcome of elections. They have skin in the game. The health and prosperity of society is an extension of themselves and their people. That last part is vital, as the individual can only exist in the context of his people.
The civic nationalist types used to answer this question with money, because they have been conditioned to put a price on everything. They no longer answer this question for the same reason. The trouble with a money requirement, like owning property or paying taxes, is it turns citizenship into a commodity. In theory, a foreigner who owns property in a society should have a vote, even though he really has no skin in the game. He can always sell his property and go to the next place that will have him.
The starting point, when you think about citizenship as having a stake in the outcome of society, is biology. The prerequisite of citizenship, the minimum requirement for voting, is having been born in the jurisdiction. If you were born in the place, then you can qualify for voting there. Voting where you were born would solve the problem of invaders piling into a state and changing its character at the ballot box. The state of Virginia would go back to be a normal state again.
Being born into the jurisdiction is a nice feature, but it is not the answer. Most people in jail were near home when they committed their crimes. What you want is people with a stake in the future of the society. Obviously, these are people who are parents or will be parents at some point. Rationally, the ballot should be limited to married people with kids or maybe married households over a certain age. A 30-year old couple can be assumed to want children. The old couple probably had children.
The other aspect to this thought experiment is what sort of behavior does a society want to reward? The current voting system is neutral about behavior. As long as you are probably a human and you possibly exist, you can vote. The fact that you are in jail, a foreigner or imaginary does not matter. That cheapens the value of citizenship, which in turn cheapens society. Our current voting system encourages everyone to be a rootless raider, a vulture feasting on the carcass of society.
Anchoring the vote in biology flips this around. It encourages the sorts of behavior that are required to maintain social stability. Extend this to holding office and you end up with a system rooted in the goals of the people, rather than in the goals of outsiders, which is what we see today. More important, it shifts the focus from the present, which is what we have now, to the future. This is why aristocratic systems are conservative. The king is always thinking about perpetuating his line.
The point of this sort of exercise is not to create a reform program. The ruling party has no interest in election reform, other than to cancel the next elections. The only way they agree to reform is if they are standing on the gallows. The point here is to break out of the conditioning that comes with the current voting mindset. Elections are supposed to be a tool, not a goal. Once you accept that, you can start thinking about who should be wielding the tool and why.
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As an aside, Mr Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” was at it’s core a discussion about citizenship.Part of the reason the movie made based on it has him spinning in his grave. Basic point being if you’re not willing to put your skin on the line for your government, you get no voice in how its run.
One of the thoughts I keep having is that married, responsible fathers should be the only ones to vote. So, effectively, one vote per normal, nuclear family cast by the patriarch. We are vested in the future.
I realize this would disenfranchise responsible single and childless men. So let’s include them but be careful how we screen them. ZMAN and Pat Buchanan can vote in my fantasy land. Shitavious can’t.
I’ll say this only because I don’t see anyone else who has: the candidates you hear about are those who have secured the funding of the donors.
The donors in our system agree on almost every issue of consequence except maybe tax policy and how imperialist our military should be. This is why you will never get a candidate who is serious about enforcing immigration or bringing the jobs or troops back home. Because no donors will fund candidates with those beliefs.
Voting is like praying. God doesn’t give a shit about your problems. Figure your own way out of the mindfuck maze. No jew bought politician is ever gonna help you.
The only value in democracy is that it allows for a governing elite to be peacefully removed from power. That’s it. Which does not mean, btw that their replacements will definitely be better. Just that they will be different. And maybe better. But maybe not.
All of which makes all of the flavors of democracy idolatry foolish to insane. Especially the constitution idolatry of civnats.
“The only value in democracy is that it allows for a governing elite to be peacefully removed from power”
government elite figure out how to not be forced out for dirt people
if people don’t want what we do than just peacefully remove people via immigration and diversity
you can easily satisfy new people by sharing some spoil that they looted from white people
Democracy is not possible when country accepted millions of new voters every year and every ethnic group of society are a minority
it’s no longer majority rule, its money rule that favor to Jewish diaspora
“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.”
G. K. Chesterton
Eventually any system of citizenship and voting will confront the issue of women. Women’s suffrage is a relatively recent phenomenon and the results haven’t been very encouraging. There will have to be some differences in the qualifications for full citizenship and voting for men and women. Never-married childless women (and never-married mothers) should never be granted full citizenship and political participation. The ages and marital status of men and women should be a big factor in their right to vote.
I admit that such a development is extremely unlikely until their is complete societal collapse and women find themselves once again dependent on men for protection and provision.
I heard Zman say when I first started to listen to him, “ we can’t vote our way out of this” I know he’s right about that. What that means changes in direct response to how much history is studied and how much present day exposure to the fire hose of propaganda I’m hit with. I voted for some guy named rocky and Kanye west VP last time around. It doesn’t matter anymore. It never did really. Not in my half a decade of breathing. I herd a report from Lagos this morning to my surprise. It seems that you have to be 75 or 70 to get the vaccine. Some joggers were screaming that black me in Lagos don’t make it to 75. I love it.
Very true. As if re-electing DJT would be a panacea…..we are in for our own “Long March,” and it starts with baby steps. Boycotting the system, if it does nothing else, might send a signal.
So, File this under Money, Mouth.
AirBnB takes about 15% of guest fees.
https://www.amren.com/blog/2020/06/airbnb-goes-full-on-woke/
” As we work to process the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others, we wanted to send a message to you directly. To hosts and guests who are hurting, angry, and scared, we want you to know that Airbnb stands with you.
Discrimination is the greatest threat to a community built on belonging and acceptance. It cuts to the core of who we are and what we believe in. Airbnb stands with Black Lives Matter, and we reject racism, bigotry, and hate.”
Why should anybody stay at an Airbnb Property?
Conservatives generally do a poor job of projecting political power. Libs are good at this. We can do alot of good for ourselves holding companies to account for the positions they take.
Airbnb wants to support an anti-white hate group? Boycott them. Coca cola wants to eliminate the whiteness of their employees. Boycott them.
These companies need consumers! Punish them for their political positions.
Z-Man, you did not define what you mean by biology. “Being born here” is not biology; it is birthright. To me, biology is something innate, such as race, ethnicity and possibly intelligence and lawfulness/criminality. Thus, a biologically constructed electorate would be one in which a certain race/ethnicity is preferred, as are intelligent, lawful people. This is not a bad basis. However, it can never happen in AINO. In fact, in this country, the electorate is increasingly multiracial and non-white, increasingly dumb and criminal. But if we’re looking at enfranchisement in the ethnostate, biology may well be the way to go.
At the root, biology is codified in your genome, which is the culmination of all the fitness selection that your ancestors experienced adapting to the environment in which they lived over many generations. In this sense, biology equals environment of ancestral adaption. Nation borders are a modern development of civilization, whereas distinctive environments have existed throughout Earth’s history.
“The real question of voting reform is what sort of person should be participating in the governance of society? When you start from that point, voting reform stops being about rigging the system and about defining citizenship.”
Aristotle understood this. He defined a polity as “a community of equals ruling and being ruled in turn.” Think of a professional association of physicians or engineers who police themselves and set their own standards. Prostitutes and drug addicts laying in the gutter don’t get a say in how the American Society of Professional Engineers conducts itself. Yet we think they should have an equal vote in matters of the state.
Plato’s Socrates describes mass democracy as a “nightmare” in which foreigners, women, slaves, children and animals are all treated as equals in Book VIII of “The Republic.” He labeled democracy as the fourth worst type of government on his scale of one to five, and predicted that it invariably and naturally degenerated to the worst type of government — tyranny.
Even in the direct democracy of Athens, voting was restricted to free males. Foreigners, slaves, and women were excluded; indeed, Aristophanes mocked the idea of women gaining control of political power in his comic spoof “The Assembly of Women.” He must be laughing his ass off in the netherworld to see us governed by Nancy Pelosi and AOC today…
The family vote idea is quite a good one. But a general lowering in timeless morality, still needs to be turned around.
I’ll say too, that while I believe the original set up of the colonies allowed for ea state to have a state religion, Lincolns new America I’d away with that.
There had never been a land, a domain, with no state religion. By not having a state religion, a people are in effect saying, the metaphysical is imaginary.
A people Who don’t admit the spiritual domain can’t expect to last too long in peace!
Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Election Reform
Well put. Normie-Cons come up with all these clever schemes but the truth is they do make it harder for black people to vote. Until they’re honest about what they’re trying to accomplish and what that means these efforts will be in vain.
That speaks to the advantage of the truly federal system, which in the US could no longer be a state by state system, but county by county, the county being sovereign. People would freely associate for the first time in seventy years and be self governing. Blacks, just as everyone else, would be free to vote and most importantly certain to suffer the consequences, unshared by others.
” … What you want is people with a stake in the future of the society. …”
Absolutely correct, but hardly a new idea.>>
From Pericles’ Funeral Oration, 2500 years ago: “… never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. …”
Any political system will be corrupted when you have corrupt people running it. The issue is not one of making sure only the right people get to vote, it is making sure corrupt people cannot exercise undue influence on your political system. The was the point with the American experiment (checks and balances, limited powers, etc.) but the corrupt people started chipping away at that before the ink was dry and now here we are: ” A republic if you can keep it”.
The challenge now is to reset our political system back to one of limited government where those who weasel their way inside don’t have the means to screw with the rest of us. Unfortunately that will probably only be accomplished with blood, as those corrupt people aren’t going to give up the goodies without a fight.
There’s no ‘resetting’ or going ‘back.’ The system, despite its checks and balances, proved incapable of preventing degradation and incursion by alien predators. We need a NEW system, but only after we clarify who will qualify to be part of a new nation. Genetics>culture>politics.
Very true. As if re-electing DJT would be a panacea…..we are in for our own “Long March,” and it starts with baby steps. Boycotting the system, if it does nothing else, might send a signal.
Even if all of the supremes except for Thomas and Alito had been found one morning last week hanging from lamp posts, there would still be no election reform. The entire country will soon be like my state, California, where the voter only gets a choice of Democrat A or Democrat B.
“Democrat B” that’s aka “Republican” for the most part, already.
Look, the “developers are useless…” may have been the last thoughts of Boeing 767 pilots as their planes headed for terra firma.
An adult cannot buy Advil without it being tracked, and some unknown ‘limit’ applied. This tracking led to being unable to buy any, as said ‘limit’ had been reached. And that, across state lines, tracked.
So a drug store chain can track your purchases of cold medicine across state lines. They make you provide your drivers license at the register.
Nothing more to say. Voter fraud is a feature, not a bug.
https://gab.com/a/posts/105780887838343911
Here’s usual conservative reformer you can find, Andrew Torba a founder of gab
His suggestion is let’s not use race factor
Because we American are all Christians and equal to the Jesus crap
pay attention word that came out of his mouth, “we”, “demon of communism”, “all Christians”
By using “we” or “all Christians” that he accepts principle of Anti-Racism
his accusation on the enemy is communist is a complete lie, the Democratic Party is the most plutocratic party that ever exists on earth
He wants to you to fight communism that doesn’t exist, Jesus saves people regardless of race and gender, so you can’t be racist, but it’s not about eliminating ethnic identity of white people
his messages targeting white people not a some Jew or Black men, made white people confuse and dazed on purpose
he ignores the simple facts, healthy people can’t get along with ethnic alien who want to take your resource or girls and destroy you
Only insane person will say “kill my race and give me billions of African/Mexican Christian!”
Torba is batshit crazy. It’s not uncommon with certain people who drink the Jeebus juice to become like him. He forgets the Bible is not a instruction guide for running maintaining and running a society. It’s why the early Christians relied heavily on Greek and Roman notions of law, society, philosophy, etc,
More than likely he’s LARPing that religious bit, and also play-acting all the other bits that go with it. Now there could be something to it since his religious posting has gotten super amped after the formation of his family, but it’s worth noting that in the early days of Gab there were ZERO postings like that. I suppose the reason why is that it’s a way to shield himself from perpetual accusations that he’s a Nazi supporter while not having to actually be who he probably is (a godless, too-clever-by-half Jew like Ron Unz).
Actually, the Old Testament, which Jesus and Paul specifically endorse, is precisely a guide for running and maintaining a society, and it is ruthlessly ethnocentric and unforgiving of degeneracy.
Yes but unfortunately today’s Christians are preached at to ignore all that OT stuff and think everyone on the planet is their “neighbor” who they are obligated to “love”. Never mind that at that time in that area of the world your neighbor was probably a close relation and definitely a member of your tribe. The word means something. When I point this out to my ‘open borders are what Jesus would do’ relations I just get that glazed over look back.
Where things become crazy is when the people who have a stake in society or at least have the trappings of having a stake; are batshit crazy.
Look at the james younger case in texas. His mom isn’t some degenerate on welfare but a practicing pediatrician.
“His mom isn’t some degenerate on welfare…”
She’s not on welfare but she is a degenerate. But you make a good point.
But in the system that the Zman describes, people who endorse such beliefs are, hopefully, a tiny minority and an electorate made up of intact families (get divorced, lose your vote?) would have no tolerance for such insanity.
The insanity lobby is bolstered in the US by a gigantic contingent of low-infomation voters — blacks, young singles, people on the dole — who don’t specifically vote for this kind of crap and don’t even necessarily support it, but enable it through their vote for Democrats.
Take gay marriage. Despite how much people like to tout that it has become “accepted,” it failed every single time it was put on a ballot for an actual public vote. It took our black-robed degenerates to force it upon us.
The current election system is a game of Hungry Hippo where each passing year ever more Hippos are bolted to an ever expanding game board. We even have Somalian hippos in places like Minneapolis. The founding fathers constructed a pretty good electoral system, which was quickly abandoned as the franchise was expanded ad infinitum. The only solution is an oligarchy that acquires power through raw force as the current system bankrupts and exhausts itself as John Adams predicted it would.
John Adams was based:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371
We’ve had a oligarchy for the last hundred years running things. Who in the hell do you think got us into every war since the Spanish American war? Hint it was the oligarchy. The American people never once supported foreign wars. They were conned into it by the elite. Every crooked trade pact was ratified by them without public input. Even when the public screamed bloody murder on some nasty piece of legislation, it still went through.
The real problem has always been the rich man who thinks his *needs* (usually to be more wealthy) are more important than the public and country he resides in. Until we find a way to put a leash on the wealthy they will inevitably corrupt every system we create.
We’re always going to have oligarchy. Always. The question is, who do you want it to be? Today we have stone dumb, aloof, incompetent ones.
Democracy is where the ruling oligarchy gets legitimacy. If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it.
It seems to me that any scheme to limit the vote is bound to fail. The US started with a minuscule government and very limited voting. Yet, here we are. Democratic politics has turned into a racket where people get into electoral politics to get rich by plundering the nation and where nobody has the interest of the nation. These same problems would exist no matter how the franchise was limited. Democracy of any kind is the problem.
Z: “It seems that the comment plugin is hopelessly broken. The developer is useless…”
As a tech guy, I know lots of colleagues who are inspired by the open source movement of free code. Z has run into the problem with open source. When people aren’t getting paid, you can’t get problems fixed.
Yep. Open source is not the panacea many believe. In this case, I’d be happy to buy a plugin that does what I want and has support. That’s not available, so I either fix it myself or find another option.
My plan at this point is to move off of this software entirely. Joomla is the most likely option. There are commercial plugins for most things and they come with developer support. It is just about making the time to do it.
So what should be the goal of the American nation, Z?
Excellent. I especially like the idea of limiting the franchise to people who have or might have kids. Kids are the future. Who better to entrust the future to except those who are making it?
“Kids are the future. Who better to entrust the future to except those who are making it?”
Look no further than Angela Merkel. She had no children, and no qualms about selling out the future of her nation to foreign bankers and their immigration policy.
“Her nation” is Israel, merkel’s mother was a tribe member
No, Merkel’s mother was not a tribeswoman and Merkel doesn’t give a shit about Israel, Jew-hater.
Maybe the problem is with who gets bribed. I have wondered about switching from ‘one man, one vote’ to ‘one dollar, one vote’, with the proceeds going towards government debt reduction.
Great. You might just as well elect Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to the permanent governing council of America.
Did you not just read an entire essay about the problems with reducing citizenship to a commodity?
And, at the risk of derailing my point, exactly how do you think the money would go to government debt reduction? There isn’t enough voter money in the world to meaningfully reduce our debt. Current debt per taxpayer is more than $223,000. Our debt is a cartoonishly huge amount of money that can never be realistically dealt with and our government spending bears no actual relationship to government revenues.
You have gotten what you wanted. See, for example, Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Foundation’s $350 million donation to managing local elections. Part of this money led to recent republican presidential and senate losses in George. I have no doubt that the money influenced the political decisions of GA Governor, Lt. Governor and Sec. of State to enact election reforms (that liberalized voting rules, allowed for illegal votes) and then certify suspect results.
“Often, it is a form of escapism where the proposed reform will magically make the people in charge into the sorts of honorable or virtuous people the system demands.”
This is probably the key sentence of the essay. I can’t remember who first said to put not your faith in systems.
There is no system that will magically change the evil into the virtuous.
You have two choices: either the system must work with a non-trivial amount of evil people manning the system, or you must start with virtuous people, while aware that the evil will slowly filter into the system.
The realization that evil will *always* creep into the system is probably the motivation behind Jefferson’s statement that the tree of liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Systems tend toward entropy (evil) and must periodically be violently reset.
During my last year of school, the administrators held an “election” that asked the current students if the school should issue some 30 year debt to build a new stadium.
Election results: tepid, but more than 50%+1.
Why, oh why, is college so expensive? Hmmm….
Because student housing and amenities are more like luxury resorts, even at mid-sized state schools and smaller liberal arts colleges?
Don’t forget all the useless admin staff either, especially in the newly created DIE grift plaguing the land.
Why would current student vote “no” on something their parents and future students’ parents will have to pay for?
The Road Back (cont)
Break the bank.
The Corruptocrats running DC are desperately trying to bankrupt the nation by printing & spending fiat money at warp speed. Most of this pseudo-wealth is going into their pockets via indirect cons, but a large chunk is also being allocated to bribing voters so as to sustain their auto-incumbency. Honest citizens are repulsed by this sort of depravity and naturally recoil at participating. But the tipping point has long been passed, and our nation’s moral bankruptcy can only be reversed with a 2×4 of economic reality. Your duty now is to turn this phony fiat into tangible goods that will keep you alive in the coming months. Help them kill the dollar.
I would still like a patriotic looking, “I voted” sticker anyways. It is a point of pride for me. My inner Civ-nat likes it.
I know you’re being sarcastic – one of the first groups I’d hang en masse would be the League of Women Voters.
This is a problem I’ve thought a lot about and I think Zman’s solution is exactly right. And also impossible in the geographical US as it exists. Our nation has become so flooded with a combination of bad ideas and bad biology that if you gave the vote to people born here, we’d be in just as bad a place as we are now. Our society, idolizing youth and individualism and hostility to the traditional family would never agree to limit the franchise to married (heterosexual) couples with kids.
The only way you get a polity like that is to separate out the remaining population of people who value things like that. And they will never let us do that peacefully.
I sometimes get tired of DR discussions because it has long been apparent to me that the only options are lose, fight for separation, or dream about some long distant day after the collapse, and nobody seems willing to start the fight. I’m sure it’s very little consolation to long-dead Roman citizens that the dark ages eventually ended.
Vizz, “they won’t let us” separate and yet we already self-segregate on a daily basis.
The geographical migration and insulated community formation, which is the next logical step for most, is limited only by our own submission to the economic system and addiction to the decadent lifestyle still (for now) afforded by globohomo’s grip across the landscape.
The DR would do well to consider investing in local systems and infrastructure of social, commercial, and physical alike in the red and rural environs instead of debating the merits of bitcoin, gold, guns, and root cellars full of beans come the Great Collapse.
IOW, if starting a business how do you go about recruiting and developing young talent to operate that business? What do you do to differentiate from competitors? What are the biggest impediments to acquiring that talent? Solve a few of those those using biology and morality instead of arbitrage and leverage.
$15/hr construction jobs building tract homes for wealthy blue state imports on land that used to be small farms that those same laborers will never be able to afford is the lay of the land presently.
An Amazon warehouse or big pharma r&d plant as the celebrated alternative is no solution either.
They wont let us is easy when the economic chains lay across state and county lines just the same. They dont have to do much when we limit ourselves by clinging to their economic system.
The problem of “good” biology being scarce and diluted is because we decided economics of today are more important than posterity of tomorrow. Boomers get a lot of heat for this but I don’t see my gen or the next doing anything different. Just lower yields on the same trades.
Finance is the great blank slate gold played handcuffs. The solution will be like curing any other addiction. It will require the good biology and men of means to turn away from the low fruit of progress and consider the future that does not include them. Yeah, its a stretch. But if the DR is convinced the Great Collapse is imminent, then why aren’t they breaking out the beans and barn raisings for their sons and future grandsons now? What exactly are they waiting for? A caravan of refugees is not an optimal scenario from which to build up better biology.
Hope you faired well through the recent weather issues.
“Hope you faired well through the recent weather issues.”
Thanks. I had some worry for the cattle on a couple nights when the temperatures were down in the single digits, but everybody made it through okay and now the weather has broken and the cattle are quite happy about that.
Hope you faired well, too.
“The real question of voting reform is what sort of person should be participating in the governance of society? When you start from that point, voting reform stops being about rigging the system and about defining citizenship.”
I remember years ago in a political class discussion over voter ID laws. It took me a while to understand the debate. I thought I was misunderstanding the topic. You mean to tell me, the voting booths WOULDN’T require proof of identification in some form? It just seemed obvious to me–if you couldn’t pass this basic requirement, you shouldn’t be voting. Shortly after we were debating about “dreamers” and citizenship for illegal immigrants. Again, I was shocked by how outnumbered I was in my opinions.
That’s when I realized none of these people actually felt truly responsible for their own opinions. Their motivation in these class “debates” wasn’t truth or integrity, i.e. they didn’t hold these opinions because they thought they were the most rational or practical, that they would actually help improve the nation. They held these opinions for superficial and selfish reasons, to pat themselves on the back and to social signal.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this behavior changes for most people when they leave the classroom.
A Republic or a Democracy requires high standards and a competent citizenry in order to function at a basic level. If you lose those to characteristics, its all over. It became clear to me early on that the Left consistently fought to lower standards, to usher in dysfunction and lassitude at ever level. And yet it had seemed obvious that they had clearly won the culture war, and were winning the political long-game.
“A citizen is someone who has a stake in the outcome of elections…The other aspect to this thought experiment is what sort of behavior does a society want to reward?”
To this day, I still don’t see how voting in the normal sense will get us out of this mess. The Left will only degenerate voting standards further. Citizenship has already become effectively meaningless. When I go to the voting booth, I know my interests will not be served. Furthermore, the system rewards delinquent behavior. It provides privilege to the incompetent and profligate. I’m hardly a citizen at all, in fact, the illegal immigrant working in the field has more “skin in the game” than I do as far as political representation.
We must start small and local. Build our own communities in our own towns and entrench ourselves in those communities. Build strong family ties, form inter-family coalitions and move on from there. We have to start changing the system by forming a new one within it. Slowly but surely.
“To this day, I still don’t see how voting in the normal sense will get us out of this mess. The Left will only degenerate voting standards further.”
There’s going to have to be a period of outright right-wing authoritarianism, followed by a return of the franchise under very limited conditions. An entire generation will have to be taught to treasure the privilege of having a say in the operations of the state.
“There’s going to have to be a period of outright right-wing authoritarianism, followed by a return of the franchise under very limited conditions.”
I completely agree. I just don’t see how that could even occur in the relative future. Somebody said yesterday, maybe our military needs to take a real beating somewhere on the world stage (not like the tenuous/impossible situations in Vietnam and Iraq, but a real pound for pound beating). People would start shitting their pants, and would almost be forced to appreciate the nation and conservative values more.
I’m not sure even that would work anymore. How’d Adrianople or Manzikert work out for the Romans?
How do you take a pound-for-pound beating in a push-button war? The days of trenches, cavalry charges and fixed bayonets are long gone.
Because it’s not guaranteed to be a push button war. A military that relies on technology won’t function if that technology is rendered useless. And there are certain potential opponents with real capability rather than illiterate mountain tribesmen (who coincidentally won both their wars against “superpowers”) that are working on that.
The American military is a paper tiger.
“They held these opinions for superficial and selfish reasons, to pat themselves on the back and to social signal.”
I think this is what Z meant by “the disinterested”. I see this all around me. Most of the younger white people here wear the same basic set of pozzed Leftist opinions about everything the way women of a certain class always make sure they have their hair and lipstick right before going out. It’s no surprise that one of the stunts they pulled back in 2016 was to wear those stupid pussy hats. That’s what politics is to them, a silly hat. This may be for the better since it may well indicate that most of them don’t really believe the mindless shit they spout or the slogans they chant. I’m not one who has a great deal of faith in the goodness of man though. What you’re dealing with are really just empty headed and extremely ill-educated hedonists. Take away their superficial pozzed NPC dogmas and there’s no guarantee that something even worse will not seep in.
Maybe restrict full citizenship to people who have earned it by demonstrating commitment to their society through military service or some other public service. After you’ve given your country a blank cheque on your lIfe, you have demonstrated that you have skin in the game. It also excludes the freeloaders.
No!
Don’t take the feel-good, easy CivNat route. First and foremost, citizenship must be rooted in biology. Now, how we decide which citizens get to vote is another matter, a matter of far less importance, btw.
I don’t give two shits if mestizo or African “serves” this country or even if they put their life on the line for this country. Because once you let them in, it no longer is my country, it’s their country.
No. This is another example of, as Zman said, treating citizenship as a commodity. It’s selling citizenship as sure as a rich Chinese man putting actual cash on the table can buy his citizenship now, except it’s selling citizenship via indentured servitude to the state.
It reverses the proper role of citizen and government: only after you prove you are a loyal servant of the state will the state allow you citizenship.
The nation is not the state. Military service and organized public service are demonstrations of loyalty to the state, not the nation. A patriotic man will join the service and fight for his nation when his nation is in danger, but he will spit on the idea of groveling to the state for his right to be a full member of his nation.
It’s making the same mistake as the people who observed that people with college educations make more money. “Hey, then we need to make sure as many people as possible have college educations! Then they’ll all make more money.” But, in reality, an uncorrupted college education was just a marker of human potential. You can’t create the potential just by slapping the right markers on an otherwise unworthy man.
You allow a bunch of mercenary soldiers to be the representatives of citizenship in your nation and you’ll have a mercenary nation, not a nation of loyal patriots.
“a mercenary nation”
Great term. That’s effectively what we are right now. As Machiavelli advised, avoid a mercenary army at all costs. They’ll be as loyal as they need to be during the good times, but at the slightest hint of trouble or weakness, they will turn on their hosts. They are self-motivated, without the requisite bonds or ties to the nation–of course they’ll abandon you if a better offer presents itself.
“…restrict full citizenship to people who have earned it by demonstrating commitment to their society through military service…”
Ignoring for the sake of argument the excellent criticisms by Citizen of a Silly Country and Vizzini, this idea might make sense if military service meant risking life and limb to repel a foreign army seeking to invade and occupy the nation.
But there’s no way anyone is “demonstrating commitment to their society” by protecting child rapists in Afghanistan from the Taliban.
No. Even if said African or Asian were to fight to defend his home and family located on American soil, that would simply indicate self-preservation and self interest. It would not alter their genetics to make them part of the historic American-European people.
I don’t disagree. I said that Citizen of a Silly Country’s argument that citizenship must be rooted in biology “excellent.” My point was that military service today by anyone is not for the benefit of our society.
I know you are afraid of being assimilated into the Borg, but maybe you could could ask Ron Unz, his is the best comments section software I’ve seen.
You could be a beta tester for what I’m pretty sure could be a lucrative software product for him.
Cue up the classroom scene from ‘Starship Troopers’.
Best case for the US is ink stained fingers, occupied third world style, since that’s who we are now.
Since we’re just brainstorming, I say limit the vote to the man of the house. Must be at least one child in the house for the dad to qualify as man of the house. Obviously a wife. Some states might want to add dogs to the set of requirements since they are often a reflection of a better man.
And they must also own property and be at least a second generation American.
Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense.
Good suggestions but I’d make it 5th generation. Enough time to have banked some capital in the infrastructure and have more of a connection to this Nation than from where one came. The person trying to cancel a White male commissioner in my county is a second generation muslim female. Outrageous.
Also, no one feeding at the public trough should qualify and that means public employees too.
I think extending the vote to women was definitely the beginning of the end. I am a Monarchist now though. I think the whole idea of leaving the British Empire was an awful mistake. We should have a Royal Family and a powerful Aristocracy. If we don’t like how they rule, we can revolt, as people have always done in human history. There is no way an ordinary person can have an informed point of view about all the different topics facing our government so it is truly meaningless to have ordinary people voting. Politics should be an Aristocratic calling. Like a vocation. Everyone else should just focus on the tasks presented to them by their serfdom, which provides for all the happiness and spiritual growth a person could ever really need. You can join the aristocracy by proving yourself to be gallant, chivalrous, and moral of course, but only through force of arms in combat on behalf of the monarch.
The beginning of the end was full male suffrage, which brought on the War and the end to the first Republic.
And could the plethora of grotesques qualify as both dog and wife?
The Democrats have done a fantastic job of outreach to even the retarded guy. What they say and what they do are completely different things. But, it has to be noted that this time around they are going all-in on the hopes and aspirations and issues that are important to their base, which the Republicans never do. If you are Republican, all you ever get is lower taxes and abortion and shipping all the jobs overseas. The Republicans will drive your job overseas, drive you into destitution, and then hand you a Bible as a consolation prize. So, it’s easy to see why the Democrats are so unbelievably popular among the retards. Heck, if they send me a thousand bucks a month and otherwise leave me alone, I am fine with that. And what the heck why not make it 2000 a month for Black people as a form of reparations and 3000 a month for illegal immigrants for the indignity of having to cross the border. In fact, why doesn’t the government just pay for everything: rent, clothes, school and so on. There is no reason some people should have extra stuff and other people should have no stuff. That being said, never go full retard.
Ultimately, Democracy is pointless. It’s a rigged system. We were cut out of the deal. I can’t see myself ever voting again after this time around. It’s too horrifying to participate in this farce.
It doesn’t take a genius to say “Free stuff! Free stuff for everyone! Debt forgiveness! Free college! Housing is a right! A living wage is a right! Everything for everyone!”
But it does take a moron to believe it.
And we’re certainly rife with morons.
As a bonus and corollary to Free Stuff For All:
bought and paid for by evil rich white people
Yeah the Republicans are really not catching on to how to “win” here.
The Democrats own this playbook:
Everyone wants free stuff. Especially retards who cannot support themselves in the modern world. So… just tell everyone that they are going to get all the free stuff they could possibly want. Not just that, but their grandma in Mexico is ALSO going to get all that free stuff too. Never worked a day in her life in America but she definitely deserves free Social Security checks and medicare for the trouble of having been Mexican all these years so bring her on over and let’s get yo granma signed up for these freebies today!
Some racist white grandpa from Iowa griping about muh national IQ average and illegal immigrants while voting Republican doesn’t stand a chance of winning in this context.
I think many of us on the DR have seen the corruption in the people behind the curtain for awhile now. The key is now more normal Civ Nats are realizing that something is really wrong with our system, the Rush Limbaugh types, they are beginning to realize we are up a shit creek without a paddle. The Civ nats are going to first reach for voter reform solution until they realize that it’s too late at the national level to reform anything.
We are living in a transitionary period in history where we on the DR know that what exists now can’t continue to function but we don’t know the termination date.
It’s like we can already see stage 4 cancer in the patient and he needs an operation while the Civ Nat’s just see a cancer diagnosis and they think a Steve Jobs type diet and vitamin routine will restore the patient to health.
It’s a frustrating period of history in which to live for us.
I had this faint, naive hope that prior to the end, Rush, with nothing left to lose, would make the case for white nationalism. It would have moved the needle on that topic more than possibly anything else.
The GOP was always a handmaiden to the Democrats and both parties are owned by the wealthy. The whole notion of political parties opposing one another is a complete fiction.
it’s only there to keep the public from noticing the ruling class that is systematically impoverishing and poisoning them. The Blacks sort of recognize it, the Mexicans just don’t care anymore. Only the higher IQ whites are so god damn stupid as to believe in the system. Whites are really their own worst enemy,
That is not true. Certainly not any more.
Democrats: Fire all White guys (White women later). Lockdown everyone forever. No relief for Texas (Biden refused the disaster declaration). Punish punish punish. Punish some more. Take away your car. Take away your hamburger. Force you onto public transport. Take away your guns and police. Let Shitavious beat, rob, murder you with impunity. Force you to eat cockroaches and weeds. Mock and call names your parents, grandparents, ancestors. Lockdown and mask for anything but anti-White riots. Lockdown some more. Kill your grandparents and parents by sending Covid Patients to nursing homes. Deny seniors Covid vaccines in favor of young black people. Black stuff all over TV and “be less White.” Electricity costs a lot, as does fuel, and both are mostly unavailable.
Republicans: however imperfectly and uneasily, open stuff up. Give Seniors vaccines first. Don’t bash White people (openly anyway). Don’t actively push all the stuff above.
And as the conflict heats up between the true believers of “be less White” and White people, these differences will be even greater. Democrats KNOW they can’t ever lose elections so they are punishing Texas. At some point that will boil over into active military measures. Swalwell was not joking about nuking Nebraska. The Intelligence people in the CIA are begging on Twitter to send drone strikes against DeSantis and Republican legislators, hit squads against Ted Cruz.
The voting issue is in some sense self-solving. Without the need to generate enough consensus the elites will simply move to punish and then eliminate their enemies: ordinary White people and thus Civil War. When Dem Reps talk about nuking Nebraska and intel agencies beg for drone strikes against Republicans its guaranteed that civil war is around the corner.
But all of those things you mention, e.g. force you to eat bugs, are merely happening in the media. No one has actually forced you to eat bugs. It’s pure psychological warfare.
Lots of ads for Impossible Burger have begun running in my corner of Commiefornia since Bill Gates announced it was time to get rid of beef. More substitute-meat products turning up in my grocery, too.
Maybe just a coincidence but I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.
All conspiracy theories aside, I have tried the needless products a few times and being polite best you can say is don’t compete well with the real thing. They’re also questions about all the processing need to turn that plant material into something resembling imitation meat
Among other things, past time to invest in a plot of land, a generator, a freezer, and a side of beef (that goes for all of us in the ‘burbs too, x10).
You might check this out,
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-texas-storm-major-disaster-declaration/
But thanks to the Biden age commenting system, you can’t edit.
Oh well.
This is yet another reason an ethno-state is the best way to configure a country. When a country is explicitly founded to benefit an ethnic group, who can vote is pretty clear: members of that ethnic group.
Who can hold office?
Who can donate to political campaigns?
Who can own media outlets?
Who can own property?
Who can own banks?
Who can emigrate to your country?
The answer is always the same: Members of my ethnic group.
And don’t pull that “well, how do your define a member of my ethnic group?” BS, because people have been doing that for thousands of years. We know how to spot our own. But if you wanted a more exact definition, three of your four grandparents were 90% or more members of our tribe. If you lack that, you are not a full citizen. Maybe, your children or grandchildren can be, and if they’ve been our country for that long and are 90% part of our tribe by blood, you can bet that they are one of us.
I’m afraid your vetting process is going to have to be a bit more in-depth than that. Most of my family came here on the Mayflower, as well as several ships afterwards and we can trace our bloodlines back to the Royal houses of England, France, Scotland and Wales. We’re in your tribe and yet there are unfortunately quite a few people in my family who fall into the globalist crowd and if allowed to settle in your ethnostate, would quietly begin undermining it behind the scenes.
The democratic ideal of the enlightenment, rule by the people rather than kings. No one seems to realize or remember that the enlightenment colonials of 1776 didn’t bother to take a vote of their fellow British subjects on the advisability of committing treason and going to war against the United Kingdom. Citizens who weren’t ready for the fracture quickly learned to keep their mouth shut to avoid being tarred and feathered or run out of town on a rail.
Mr Z Man, regarding your comment system, did the developer manage to figure out why it broke?
I doubt they bothered to look. You get what you pay for.
Rails. It has a very good commenting system. And Comfortable Mexican Sofa (CMS haha) is a very nice Content Management System on top of Rails.
Its hard to beat Rails for web app infrastructure.
Disqus has done it’s job by sucking the oxygen out of the room for competing products. That being said I think the homebrew comment system at Unz is pretty decent, and I think they run WordPress, but someone would have to talk them into sharing.
Unfortunately, we’ve reached the point – actually long ago – where the system is unreformable. I don’t know how long ago it was, but it used to be being a politician wasn’t a full time job – you had to make a living otherwise. Now it’s just a means to a probable rich end – that and being able to bloviate BS and boss around the hoi polloi.
The entire system is corrupt from top to bottom and needs to come crashing down. Only then can any serious reform possibly be undertaken.
On another note, I see lil Stevie wonder is heading to Ghana – about 50 years late – maybe he’ll be the vanguard. We can hope.
He’ll be surrounded by ebony and be next to ivory, coast that is.
The most likely outcome of the system collapsing is something far worse than globohomo. Things rarely get better by getting worse. The people most in position to benefit from a such a collapse are the people who hate us and want us dead.
The Biden Regime refused to allow Texas access to the electrical grid in the storm’s aftermath. Texans could easily have received power from other states after that storm caused the collapse of the wind/solar infrastructure. Alex Jones uncovered the idiotic agreement Abbot signed with the Energy Department allowing the feds to decide when or if to supplement the wind/solar power grid. They chose not to…and Abbot could do nothing about it. Check it out online.
Abbott is like all other Texas politicians – all hat no cattle. Lots of conservatard talk. And the damned aging repukes keep voting for him or for Cornyn or for the latest magic mystery meat that says nice things that accord with their sacred ‘principles.’
Texas is NOT the Texas others like to imagine – that Texas existed perhaps 50 or 75 years ago. I was quickly disabused of that myth when I moved here more than 25 years ago, to learn almost no real White Texans lived in the DFW area (and it was full of Han, Pajeet, Mussulmen, and Mestizos beloved of the former NY and Chicago nuTexans). Houston is about 85% non-White, Austin is weird and run by a small hat, and the smaller, more rural areas are quickly being overrun with mestizos. Texas was done years ago. Look elsewhere for any future.
Generally true. However, West and parts of North Texas still have potential. I would urge all real Texans to move to those areas.
I’m not sure I can bring myself to vote after the 2020 debacle. That was open tyranny by the Ruling Class, and they are daring anyone to notice. As far as I am concerned, voting is a scam. Dissolute voters will always produce dissolute government.
What hope can one have if you are pro choice – not in the baby sense – when the SCOTUS just legalized election cheating?
Fourth trimester abortion of the sitting government and then burning the placenta of progress in a pyre of globohomo CEO’s stacked to the tall pines? Its rather pagan, but I think its what the Founders had in mind knowing full well the clock was counting down on the franchise the moment it started. “Pro Choice” does raise the point that morality being the infrastructure of a Nation, leaves citizenship in the dark cold hands of administrators and despots alike once it has been rendered less universal than the “vote”.
Jefferson, for one, was under no illusions that it would end any other way. Gallows are my preferred method, and then charge their next of kin for a new length of rope.
I’m more evil, I must protest. I would extend the gallows to the next of kin. It’s not enough to take out ‘x,’ if his sons or brothers or blue-haired daughters inherit to continue his work. You have to end the ability of that particular genetic line to accumulate wealth or cause trouble.
And I might add that voting only in local elections is farcical as well. The same cheating processes used nationally are still in place to tilt the local election decisions—and I suspect have—but these frauds have taken a back seat to the nationals as of late.
Totally agree. And why I stopped voting locally long before I stopped voting nationally. That’s why voting is a farce until BOTH problems have been addressed – the structural AND the people. My municipality didn’t bother to plow any of the local streets last week, even the main thoroughfares, whereas all the neighboring ones did at least to a minimal extent (one passable lane and/or some sanding at intersections). And my next ‘leader’ is likely to be a LYFM who won’t have any more concern for me and mine than the current, darker alien one does.
Local and state elections are more important than ever though. I agree that the federal level is lost to us, but that means a state and locality that will protect us (or give us the tools to protect ourselves) from federal overreach.
…is all the more important.
[couldn’t find an edit button]
Vindication at last. You have a PEOPLE problem. A bullet would take care of it nicely, because the soap box and ballot box no longer work.
A bullet fired with precision. The first Civil War cost 600,000 dead and countless grievously wounded, and the vast majority of them were alpha males. We need to keep the robust alphas around and excise the rotten festering shit that accumulates when evolutionary fitness selection is absent.
The ballot box hasn’t worked for us peeps for a very long time. The ruling class tolerates voting because it gives them cover and mollifies the masses so they don’t go into the swanky super zip codes and eat the mofo’s calling the shots from behind the scenes.
And ultimately the ruling class and their supporters among the upper middle class Whites has to be dealt with no matter what we do. They have made it clear they want us dead and gone and are going full bore ahead with that even now.
Such pessimism! The Union of Soviet Socialist “republics” had elections and it’s my understanding that the candidates often received 100% of the votes. We here in the west should Envy such unanimous approval of leaders 😄
Federalism, as originally conceived, was the best attempt I’ve seen to address this. It was (in theory) fully modular — since a rough, 18th century frontier society couldn’t imagine even the possibility, let alone the desirability, of widespread population movement, each locality would pursue its own long-term good. And since “property” meant “land” and “land” meant “family”…
Black pill time: In an interconnected world such as ours, I simply can’t see how to avoid despotism. Even something like “autarky” in the Funny Mustache Guy sense (thus “disconnecting”) wouldn’t suffice, as without a despot enforcing the culture of autarky, someone would break it to make a buck… the wannabe pirates-in-neckties of Globohomo ye have always with you, as I think Jay-Z once said. Just as water always seeks its lowest level, so greed and sloth and the rest of the Seven Deadlies always find some way to break out of any political arrangement.
I was thinking about that last night. The strong and good create culture for the benefit of all, but culture nurtures the weak and bad. It’s why graft and criminality are rampant in cities while the countryside, for all its problems, is more honest. You can’t scam plants into growing, or livestock into producing.
Nature would reform who could be reformed and cull the rest.
“The strong and good create culture for the benefit of all, but culture nurtures the weak and bad.” And eventually a new breed of strong and good rise above the weak and bad.
We talk about it all the time, but there’s a time where you have to accept the seasonality of human experience as much as you accept the cycles of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Are we making a mistake by constantly striving to improve on the current system when it will eventually be consigned to the dust bin of history? In what way does that differ from the social engineers of the left? Should we be like the lilies of the field instead?
I don’t know the answer. I’m certainly not averse to actively trying to shape the present and future in a way that benefits me and mine, but I also try to keep in mind that the will of a greater Architect than me won’t be denied.
Yep. That’s why I’m not necessarily opposed to collapse. ‘Worst’ case we start over. Ideally, partial collapse creates the conditions for reform.
It is human nature to suffer and to struggle against suffering. It is who we are.
I know it sounds crazy at first, out-there even for neoreactionary types.
The only way I’ve come up with is to have an Amendment 0 teamed up with the next 2: “anyone that advocates for [X,Y,Z] loses their rights, including the right to life.”
We can quibble about X,Y,Z but the fact remains that our elites will ALWAYS sell us out, therefore the only way to prevent that is to give the common people an option to bypass the elites for protecting the nation.
How about a country where the prime directive is the flourishing of white families? No policy can conflict with the prime directive.
What’s the point of voter reform if there’s no one worth voting for. Even with a perfect voting system, when you look at the choices for political leadership, why bother?
I think you have it backwards; it’s not the retards who are voting you need to worry about, it’s the retards receiving the votes you should be concerned with.
I agree in general but you should be willing to make exceptions for certain circumstances. People in Florida have to be relieved they have DeSantis, as imperfect as he is, instead of that moronic gay druggie as Governor. If there is a local election that could greatly impact your quality of life, you should still vote.
The scariest thing about DeSantis is that he and his solid background barely beat the drugged out, closeted freak he was running against.
Yeah, makes you wonder how many gravestones, pets, and imaginary friends “voted” for the loser.
Good point. The counter argument is enfranchisement of the retarded pages the way for the election of the retarded. You have to have more mental capacity to make end of life decisions than to vote. It’s the perfect system for grifters and idiots
It’s both. If all the suggestions being made to qualify to vote would apply to holding office as well it would solve most of that problem. Everything starts with a vision so why not at least put one of a dignified, competent, homogeneous, and loyal populace and polity out in the ether?
I don’t know enough about the system in Germany to comment on how your candidates are picked, but in Weimerica it’s all about the shekels. Even if you could find an honest guy who really did want to devote his time to his people, he’d never get enough money to overcome those with the connections to the bigger money people. This all goes back to citizenship and who and what determines having a stake in the future of the society. Fix who composes your society (i.e. a racial ethnostate) and then limit voting AND standing for office based on making it difficult or impossible for the stupid, lame, and lazy of one’s own race to decide the future.
Honest guys that want to devote their lives to “the people” aka zealots and nut jobs. People that get into politics for anything other than money and prestige are terrifying.
It’s not really the voters or the vote-receivers that we should worry about. The fundamental question of statecraft is: how can we get the losers of our society to perpetuate it?
The answer is two-fold: reward the lower classes for working to perpetuate the system; make sure the bad luck they suffer isn’t used by the winners to exploit them out of what they’ve earned for supporting the system. Reform of the democratic process missed the point because it doesn’t fundamentally address the issues if the lower class. The AOC crowd may be misguided, to an extent, about addressing the problems facing citizens under 40, but they are absolutely correct in observing that trying to perpetuate the current order is a good way to end up a debt-ridden wage slave who can be bankrupted by an unexpected medical emergency.
No. We have terrible politicians because being owned by others is a requirement to get elected.
Have an acquaintance that ran for office. He was a strong candidate but lost because certain key power brokers didn’t support him in the primary. These groups support people that they consider to be credible at being able to deliver on the things they want. The politician can’t win the election without this support and, once elected, are shackled to promises made to the groups that helped get them elected. So, IMO, virtue of the politician is inherent compromised by the process. They aren’t their own man at the end of the day, more of a puppet of other more powerful groups.
The better the electorate, the less chance a “retard” has of getting on the ballot. The opposite, of course, is equally true.
Democracy selects for mediocrity at best. More often pleasant idiocy and all to often sociopathy.