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Obama’s wrong and so are (some of) his critics

Barack Obama created a little stir with two of his speeches recently, at least among those of us who still haven’t been bewitched by his ostentatious oratory. First, in San Francisco, he said,

“So it’s not surprising then that [when voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Then, he kind of made it worse by trying to spin and backtrack from those comments, in Indiana:

People don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.

I read about this in a blag post by Michael Young at Reason’s Hit and Run, who I think is wrong about what is wrong with Obama’s explanation. Or, at the very least, Young doesn’t read enough into it.

Young says,

While Obama is indeed engaging in spin, there is a far more disturbing aspect to his interpretation. He misses the essential nature of modern culture. People don’t end up focusing on issues like the right to bear arms, gay marriage, faith-based and family-based issues, and the like, because of bitterness against Washington or a sense that they can’t effect change there. People focus on these issues because modern American political culture is, effectively, about subcultures, variety, pursuing parochial aims, and shaping one’s identity and personal agendas independently of the state.

First of all, people do cry for the government to help them with their economic woes all the time; that is half of what every state and federal political campaign in America is about. The 2004 presidential election would be one major exception, when the primary issue was national security and fighting terrorism. (Karl Rove’s genius campaigning, you know—scare the voters into thinking only Bush and the neocons could keep us safe. He was right: it worked.)

Second, the reason voters stress social/cultural issues like gay marriage and Constitutional issues like gun rights is that the State has a very central, though completely unjustified, role in these matters. Elected and unelected criminals have arrogated to themselves the power to make unilateral decisions about what individuals can do with their private lives on their private property. Most people think this is just great and therefore campaign to influence the State’s decision before their political enemies can; this is a wonderful illustration of how politics—even politics under a wise and enlightened Obama administration—divides people into factions and embitters them against one another.

Michael Young is right to reject Obama’s claim that voters feel they can’t effect change in Washington. They do think they can influence decisions in Washington, which is why they vote. But he is completely wrong when he asserts, “People focus on these issues because modern American political culture is, effectively, about subcultures, variety, pursuing parochial aims, and shaping one’s identity and personal agendas independently of the state.” As I just stated, people shape their social identity and personal agendas primarily within the framework of the State and its electoral and legislative processes precisely because the State has the power to declare official policy about these issues, which people eventually accept as the right and wrong of the issue (whether they realize it or not).

Young is actually the one who “misses the essential nature of modern culture.” That culture is: The State is the be-all and end-all of effecting positive change in society, so we should do all we can to influence and control it. Everyone obviously doesn’t think that, and certainly not all of the time, but it is true a surprisingly large amount of the time. If you are not libertarian, notice how often you or other people call for the State to fix something (even if the State caused the problem to begin with) or how often you praise the State for having righted some wrong or prevented a wrong from ever existing. Maybe you think that is right and good; I obviously don’t; either way, that is the dominant political paradigm in 21st-century America—the “essential nature of modern culture.”

Perhaps my most important point: People campaign and vote and show their support for certain candidates based on their belief that those candidates will implement the right policies, the most effective policies, the most virtuous policies. First, let’s keep in mind that a lot of people voted for those candidates’ opponents, so why do they get screwed out of getting what they want simply because a majority defeated them in an election? Is Might Makes Right a very wise or just method of determining how a society should function?

Second, let’s be honest and admit that most opponents in political races have strikingly similar agendas: more of this type of government vs. more of that type of government. Let’s also be honest about the fact that even if, say, a Republican’s agenda really does call for smaller government, larger government is usually what we get. History proves this undeniably. Slower growth, maybe, but not shrinkage. What about the people who want something diametrically opposed to what all the Republocrats have to offer? No matter what happens in any election, we always get screwed. We vote for more freedom and always get more socialism. We express our dissatisfaction and disillusionment by voting for third-party candidates or protesting the entire electoral sham; we call it a sham because the difference between the candidates isn’t as big as the politicians, the voters, or most boobs in the media claim it is, and also because we get the exact opposite of what we prefer. Who would voluntarily keep subjecting themselves to a system of governance that was certain to give them the opposite of what they wanted? It isn’t voluntary, and we have no other (good) choice. Does the fact that every single thing about the State is involuntary make anyone else the least bit unhappy or ambivalent or disillusioned about the nature of monopolistic government?

To finish my point: When Obama said, “People don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody is going to help them,” he was, as usual, wrong. People do vote on economic (and other) issues precisely because they are deceived into believing the State will help them. They are deceived in two ways: one, that their vote really affects what the elected and unelected criminals in their state capital or in Washington will do; and, two, that the Republocrats’ plans for “helping” them really would help, if implemented perfectly and honestly and non-partisanly. No matter what you vote for, you’re getting more corporate-state socialism, and no matter which enlightened and honest politicians you put in office, the socialism ain’t gonna work.

Obama said, “But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.” No, they do believe it, which is precisely why they vote, which is precisely why they are wrong, and precisely why this whole electoral racket works.