You’re a great person to engage with. Thank you so much. I’m glad we connected. No time for the Reddit now, but I’ll get to it. I’ve read some other helpful stuff I’ll copy links to when I get a chance.
Andrew, I agree completely with your take and thank you for writing it. This is an overarching issue--the long campaign to make voters choose their own disempowerment.
One of the hopes of employee ownership of firms is that people would learn to belong to a community where decisions have to be discussed and made all the time instead of every few years. That would build democratic character and teach the skills of genuine dialogue in a context where people cannot just blow off those who disagree (as happens on the Internat as a supposed arena for dialogue). Deliberative democracy should start with what most people do all day long.
May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022Liked by Andrew Van Wagner
Good article. Usually I like to challenge people's articles (username checks out right?), but in this case I agree with everything written here. I would like to add one other observation of mine to build off what you wrote.
The way the legislative process is taught and explained to people is so broken/boring, that a reason for this de-politization you mention is because the government lawmaking process seems so convoluted and difficult to understand that many people just give up in trying to influence the process altogether and would rather do something simple, like vote and hope for the best. Then tune out until next time they're supposed to vote. I can't say I blame them sometimes.
The process makes it way easier for special interest groups/corporations to get away with what they do because they have the money and resources to game the process inside and out, get the best talent to go on the hill for them, and donate to the right candidates so that they feel indebted to them to some degree. The game is slanted towards them in more ways than we can imagine.
For example, I support Medicare for All, but there are so many moving parts in the legislature that it can seem overwhelming at times to accomplish anything on that matter. Same with climate change or other things, especially when the goal is to make radical changes in a short period of time. You need to get buy in from the legislators (and their staff) in subcommittee who decide which bills to move forward to the committee, then you have to fight a ton of special interest groups to ensure that nobody waters down the bill in committee, then when it's in committee, you need to get the right people in there to testify in support of the matter and give them the right information, then when it passes committee you need to get a majority of the house on board (and avoid ear marks/mark ups and all the other nonsense that comes with that), and so on so forth. And all of this is while members of Congress are being bombarded with hundreds of issues/bills at a time. Nothing comes easy when trying to accomplish something legislatively in DC (or even a state level for that matter). Anyone who says otherwise has not spent a day working on capitol hill.
None of this even talks about the bureaucracy at the Federal level and how they would go about enforcing/implementing something like Medicare for all. And everyone has a different vision for how all of this should work too from subcommittee all the way up to its implementation.
I think that's why a lot of people check out and why people gravitate towards anti-governmental populism. If they can't understand the process and feel (correctly) that it is not made to benefit them, why not just burn it to the ground? The more people understand how things get done and feel engaged/empowered to utilize it, the less disengagement and disgruntled sentiment you get. You can make changes and get things done, but it's not easy. The easier we can make it for people to understand, the easier it will be to join activist groups.
You’re a great person to engage with. Thank you so much. I’m glad we connected. No time for the Reddit now, but I’ll get to it. I’ve read some other helpful stuff I’ll copy links to when I get a chance.
Andrew, I agree completely with your take and thank you for writing it. This is an overarching issue--the long campaign to make voters choose their own disempowerment.
One of the hopes of employee ownership of firms is that people would learn to belong to a community where decisions have to be discussed and made all the time instead of every few years. That would build democratic character and teach the skills of genuine dialogue in a context where people cannot just blow off those who disagree (as happens on the Internat as a supposed arena for dialogue). Deliberative democracy should start with what most people do all day long.
Good article. Usually I like to challenge people's articles (username checks out right?), but in this case I agree with everything written here. I would like to add one other observation of mine to build off what you wrote.
The way the legislative process is taught and explained to people is so broken/boring, that a reason for this de-politization you mention is because the government lawmaking process seems so convoluted and difficult to understand that many people just give up in trying to influence the process altogether and would rather do something simple, like vote and hope for the best. Then tune out until next time they're supposed to vote. I can't say I blame them sometimes.
The process makes it way easier for special interest groups/corporations to get away with what they do because they have the money and resources to game the process inside and out, get the best talent to go on the hill for them, and donate to the right candidates so that they feel indebted to them to some degree. The game is slanted towards them in more ways than we can imagine.
For example, I support Medicare for All, but there are so many moving parts in the legislature that it can seem overwhelming at times to accomplish anything on that matter. Same with climate change or other things, especially when the goal is to make radical changes in a short period of time. You need to get buy in from the legislators (and their staff) in subcommittee who decide which bills to move forward to the committee, then you have to fight a ton of special interest groups to ensure that nobody waters down the bill in committee, then when it's in committee, you need to get the right people in there to testify in support of the matter and give them the right information, then when it passes committee you need to get a majority of the house on board (and avoid ear marks/mark ups and all the other nonsense that comes with that), and so on so forth. And all of this is while members of Congress are being bombarded with hundreds of issues/bills at a time. Nothing comes easy when trying to accomplish something legislatively in DC (or even a state level for that matter). Anyone who says otherwise has not spent a day working on capitol hill.
None of this even talks about the bureaucracy at the Federal level and how they would go about enforcing/implementing something like Medicare for all. And everyone has a different vision for how all of this should work too from subcommittee all the way up to its implementation.
I think that's why a lot of people check out and why people gravitate towards anti-governmental populism. If they can't understand the process and feel (correctly) that it is not made to benefit them, why not just burn it to the ground? The more people understand how things get done and feel engaged/empowered to utilize it, the less disengagement and disgruntled sentiment you get. You can make changes and get things done, but it's not easy. The easier we can make it for people to understand, the easier it will be to join activist groups.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.