The Worst People
24th April 2018
ZMan is delightfully dyspeptic today.
If you read Donald Kagan’s account of the The Peloponnesian War, the politicians of Athenian democracy come in for some rough treatment for their dishonestly, stupidity and fecklessness. Kagan is especially tough on Alcibiades, who he mostly blames for the disastrous Sicilian Expedition. Whether that is fair or not is debatable, but Kagan’s description of Alcibiades as a duplicitous and egotistical politician, with a penchant for snapping penises off of statuary, strikes a chord with anyone who follows politics today.
Look around Washington, and with few exceptions, the place is full of the worst sorts of people. It’s not just the dishonestly, which is a permanent feature of politics, regardless of the system. That’s a self-correcting feature, for the most part. The main issue in our politics is that our system attracts the worst people. It is nearly impossible to find an elected official who has ever done honest work. Most are phenomenally stupid, outside their reptilian ability to fool voters and cozy up to the billionaires that bankroll them.
The problem is that politicians will say whatever it takes to get them elected. Once they’re in office, the people who are in a position to give them money and votes to help them stay in office get priority, and to Hell with what would actually benefit the people.
It is tempting to say that this is just the natural result of democracy. There is a lot of truth there, as this was the result of Athenian democracy, as well. The standard critique of democracy is that it brings together a bunch of not so smart and wise people, expecting them to be collectively what they are not individually. Dumb people do not become smart when their numbers increase. Therefore, the antidote to the defects of democracy is limiting the franchise to the best people. That’s the argument for a representative republic.
The counter to this is the public is almost always choosing between two terrible choices when they go to vote. It’s not that they are choosing poorly, so much as they can only choose poorly. At election time, you get to select between two degenerate sociopaths, so the result is fixed. It’s hard to blame the public for bad choices, given what we see on display in our elections. The reason Trump is in the White House, despite his long list of liabilities, is he was the most honest guy on stage. Think about that for a second.
Amen to that.