Voting as warfare

I detest when people like high school teachers and random lecturers try to torture meaning out of pop or rock music that doesn't exist. U2's "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" seems to be a particular magnet for that kind of mental abuse. Corrosion of Conformity's "Voting with a bullet" is probably used in some social studies classes somewhere, and the title of the song reminded me of some lectures I've heard in the past. The main thesis in these lectures was that the vote is a legal surrogate for physical violence. If you stop and think about it, voting is essentially saying that people want to adopt a majority position, with the implication of forcing the minority to adopt the position of the majority. They don't want to play ball? Prison, exile, or death.

The (in)famous joke about democracy is that it's two wolves and a sheep arguing what to have for dinner. Of course, take it a step farther, and you have two wolves arguing what to have for dinner. One's eventually going to try to eat the other. This is the contradiction inherent in democracy, that while people should have a right to participate in a political process if they pay into what they process provides, it depends on people who are putting aside their own interests in favor of the common good.

On the other side of the issue, all other systems lead to discontent, revolution, and destructive dynastic power struggles. An absolute monarchy doesn't have the problem of elections as battlefields, but no one can look at the reign of Henry VIII for example and say that it was stable from a political standpoint. In Colonial America, only a tiny percentage of the population was allowed to vote, as it was recognized how easy it was to coerce the less wealthy and privileged into voting in certain ways. If you worked for a wealthy man, your vote would be suspect, as you were dependant upon that man. However, this system lead to things like Bacon's Rebellion.

In short, any political system that exists, given that it has grown to a certain size where alternate polities cannot be formed, suffers from unsolvable contradictions which will inevitably bring its demise. While there have been exceptions (America, post-revolution), the trend is generally not towards better governance, but worse. Haiti is on the verge of a revolution or civil war right now against the elites, and whatever government replaces it will likely be one originating in the criminal classes. Maybe it will be better than the previous government, but the odds are not great of that happening. When a political system collapses, trust is eroded and interests become more personal, selfish, and local. In other words, less efficient and more prone to a lack of cooperation.

America is headed the same way, itself. There is no sense of national unity these days, and you have two political camps which are farther apart than at any other time in American history, including the period of the Civil War. At some point, that tension will be resolved, and what follows it is anyone's guess. It's safe to say that what does come after will hardly satisfy the winning side and probably won't satisfy everyone on the winning side, either. These are the sorts of events which eventually destroy civilizations from within, and once those structures are gone, they won't come back for a very long, if ever.