Represent

It’s remarkably difficult to write meaningfully on democracy to an audience that generally accepts that representative government retains even a waning place in our world. To those that for whatever reason believe in the placebo that is the vote, there is nothing to fix. Political ire is a pastime, not a poignancy or motive for change. The vote will out. Just give it time, next election the stars will line up.

We are on our leash, or perhaps more honestly a choke chain. We are to bite and gnaw, to get angry, even to enlighten ourselves at times, but to do nothing, change nothing. To repent at the thought, to wait, and vote, and produce and consume until the next vote is arranged for us. To encourage others to wait also. Behave.

Is this a peoples collective gambling habit? To insist on voting in a rigged election, hoping eventually for our kids, or their kids, for some generation, the world will dole out a reasonable man with reasonable politics? Men to place our hope and vote in, finally? Something more than a bandaid or a compromise that sounds good enough for us to get back to work?

The odds are astronomical. These men must first be born into a world, geared towards their extermination from birth. They must survive adolescence, they must not be swayed by societies secondary systems of indoctrination, by debt, by duty, and futility. They must for an age, remain steadfast amidst universal adversity, as any other man. They must possess motivation to enter politics, they must charm and beguile others. They must win an election. They must be lucky enough to be amongst peers or like minds, so as to be agreeable enough to put forth ideas with a chance at successful adoption. So for every one man that meets these unlikely odds, the chances decline exponentially, for there must be a body of these men, concurrent with the one, hundreds of these men and women must be born at once, all of one mind or purpose. This man must not be a woman, that’s got to be incorporated into the odds as well.

Truly, you shall win the lottery, or a fortune gambling, before a representative government actually represents you. Your descendants, mankind’s descendants, and indeed life on Earth itself, shall be long gone, before this impossibly robust representation then bears fruit.