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Oct. 28th, 2008 07:36 pmI'm feeling pretty positive about this election, though the eleventh hour vote blocking is a bit worrying.
2004 bothered me a lot on the lead up, because just the idea it was a close election and there were people who couldn't make up their minds seemed a pretty big condemnation of democracy. Right now it's looking like a landslide for Obama, which is awesome.
There's just one thing that bothers me.
It's the economic argument.
One of the recurrent arguments against Obama's tax plan/economic policy at large is some variant of "he's going to take your money". Sometimes it's claiming Obama's said this. Other times it's saying that of course he's going to have to raise taxes on the middle class/tax small businesses to death/send the Redistribution Police to everything you own, that, sure, he's saying he won't, but he's going to because he's going to have to.
It's kind of like arguing that if Politician One tells you he's going to fuck you over, and Politician Two doesn't, that of course Politician Two is going to have to fuck you over, so vote Politician One. The centerpiece of the argument is rarely that Obama is lying about his super-secret-agenda, probably because that sounds kind of crazy. It's purportedly from the position of a jaded cynic saying all politicians are the same, except that it's somehow a big deal if you vote for the other one even though supposedly, it's something any politician is going to have to do.
And in general, a lot of the people's arguments against economic policy seem to be under the impression they're far, far richer than they actually are.
I'm not really sure what this sort of thing says about democracy, either. Democracy pretty much works on the principle that, if everyone picks what's best for them, you'll end up with something that's good for the majority. When you have the majority voting like they're the minority... People interpreting "raise taxes on the rich so we can have infrastructure again" as "OMG THEY IS TAKING ALL MY MONEYS AND GIVING IT TO THE CRACKHEADS!" are doing it wrong.
I don't know what it is that makes people consistently assume they're in the top 1% of everything and act accordingly, but we need to figure out a way to make it stop.
2004 bothered me a lot on the lead up, because just the idea it was a close election and there were people who couldn't make up their minds seemed a pretty big condemnation of democracy. Right now it's looking like a landslide for Obama, which is awesome.
There's just one thing that bothers me.
It's the economic argument.
One of the recurrent arguments against Obama's tax plan/economic policy at large is some variant of "he's going to take your money". Sometimes it's claiming Obama's said this. Other times it's saying that of course he's going to have to raise taxes on the middle class/tax small businesses to death/send the Redistribution Police to everything you own, that, sure, he's saying he won't, but he's going to because he's going to have to.
It's kind of like arguing that if Politician One tells you he's going to fuck you over, and Politician Two doesn't, that of course Politician Two is going to have to fuck you over, so vote Politician One. The centerpiece of the argument is rarely that Obama is lying about his super-secret-agenda, probably because that sounds kind of crazy. It's purportedly from the position of a jaded cynic saying all politicians are the same, except that it's somehow a big deal if you vote for the other one even though supposedly, it's something any politician is going to have to do.
And in general, a lot of the people's arguments against economic policy seem to be under the impression they're far, far richer than they actually are.
I'm not really sure what this sort of thing says about democracy, either. Democracy pretty much works on the principle that, if everyone picks what's best for them, you'll end up with something that's good for the majority. When you have the majority voting like they're the minority... People interpreting "raise taxes on the rich so we can have infrastructure again" as "OMG THEY IS TAKING ALL MY MONEYS AND GIVING IT TO THE CRACKHEADS!" are doing it wrong.
I don't know what it is that makes people consistently assume they're in the top 1% of everything and act accordingly, but we need to figure out a way to make it stop.
