Why Follow Politics?

I avoided last night's candidates' debate because it represents something so monumentally absurd that the mind reels. That mature adults can be taken in by the charade is depressing. Yet there is hope that more and more people will see the farce for what it is and reject it. All it takes is an open mind and a willingness to confront the truth.

Political candidates want to assume power over our lives. What could be more pathologically arrogant? They want to make decisions on your behalf even though your decisions belong to you by definition. And they're not asking for your permission, either: you are only permitted to vote for who is going to join the gang that rules you. This diminishes your freedom, for a political leader is someone whose decisions are backed by force. The essence of politics is force. Force treats its victims as literal physical objects instead of as personalities. This is directly contrary to the core beliefs of all civilized societies and religious and ethical systems. Because force is destructive of everything we value, it follows that nothing good can come of politics.

You might retort that one must vote for the lesser evil. Yet this only highlights the truth that politicians and politics are inherently detrimental and that the system is deeply flawed. Nobody should ever do evil, lesser or otherwise; isn't this the message of Christianity, et al? How can politics not have a deleterious effect on our morality when it teaches that we ought to obtain our objectives by force rather than mutual consent?

There is something terribly wrong when one can only choose that which harms him least. If someone asks whether you prefer to be punched or shot, wouldn't you respond that there is no imperative to inflict injury in the first place? This is obvious, but politics is so deeply entrenched in our way of thinking that it never occurs to most that the real dichotomy is not punching vs. shooting, but whether people ought to be subjected to aggressive violence at all. Defending the system on the basis that things cannot change is counterproductive because it assists in the continuance of politics through the legitimacy thus attributed to it. Thus, the plague of government on mankind is upheld by our aggregated pessimistic inertia. This pessimistic belief in the permanence of the status quo helps to ensure its permanence and thus constitutes the prime obstacle to the removal of legalized aggressive force from our lives. Its very circularity invalidates it as a serious argument against the advent of liberty.

The political issues are phony because government created them. My skeptics might want to ask themselves which decisions they need politicians to make for them, and whether they are derivative of the political landscape or would exist independently of the state. I can't think of a single genuine issue that requires political intervention. If every problem/issue is an artificial creation of government, it would be bizarre to maintain that we need government for any reason. Obviously, the solution is to show the rascals the door so we can live in a society that is not based on force.

We are supposed to vote for politicians who will "fight" on our behalf—yet please consider what this means. To "fight" for constituents is to protect them from the greater damage that other politicians and bureaucrats would inflict. Here we see that politics creates its own demand. Let this sink in for a minute.

Politicians promise to "fight" for constituents because, in reality, politics is largely a battle between interest groups seeking to use government force to get their way at the expense of the rest of us. It is hard for participants to disengage from this process while the system persists, because to abandon lobbying carries with it the danger that one's opponents will prevail and that force will then be used against the retiring party. The logic of the system helps perpetuate it. Yet the underlying dynamic—that force is to be harnessed and directed against other interests who frequently seek to do the same to you—is bankrupt from both a moral and a utilitarian standpoint.

Unless you are a political insider or an historian, fear of the candidates' proposed policies is the only reason to care about debates and elections, just as the fear of a burglary or a fire is the sole reason to install burglar and fire alarms. Political vigilance, then, serves primarily as defensive monitoring of threats emanating from the halls of power.