Electoral Conditioning

2020 has been the year of the new normal. Masks have become such a part of our lives that seeing someone in a public place such as a grocery store seems wrong somehow. Signs on the floor and tables in restaurants barricaded by chairs or crime scene tape are expected.


But our story begins in 2000. Right here in Broward County, FL. It’s the story of the Chad family. There was Hanging Chad, Dimpled Chad, and all the other little Chads. Broward became the focus of the nation and indeed the world as the charming but incompetent Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant and her department fumbled the presidential election. You know the rest.


The 2000 fiasco changed the world in a lot of ways. It made both of the legacy parties aware of the advantages of having an army of lawyers at the ready come election time. The parties also learned to use electoral disinformation more effectively to convince people of the outcome they desired and to get popular opinion on their side. Now, with social media so prevalent, the voters have become the disseminators of party propaganda. All we can do is try to be louder than the people we disagree with.


The 2020 campaign is all but over. Joe Biden has been declared the winner. The Republicans are demanding that every vote be counted. Their position has, not shockingly, changed since 2000. I am personally thankful that Florida got their crap together and we are not the butt of the jokes this time around, but there will be other chances for us to screw up. Stay tuned.


The conditioning of the electorate has been so complete that neither side could see that their candidates were more alike than either would feel comfortable admitting. Biden personally laid the foundation for the current state of affairs which led to the BLM movement. Trump was worse on gun control than Obama. And to call yourself a conservative and support the massive increase in our debt Trump saddled us with is dishonest at best.


During the weeks leading up to election day, I received two or three fliers every day in the mail. The ones from Biden told us how awful Trump is. The Trump pieces told us how awful Biden is. The thing is, neither was really lying. Both candidates were awful and neither has a sliver of respect for the Constitution. Republicans, even moderate ones, should hate everything Trump stands for. Yes, the tax cuts were good, and the attempts to cut government regulation were a good thing, but overall, he was more liberal than Bill Clinton. But he called himself a republican and that’s good enough.


While I am the first to criticize libertarians and their absurd purity tests, at least we stand for something more than a logo. We’ve taken our quest for ideological perfection to such an extreme that we scare off volunteers and voters and we turn our backs on our own candidates. Maybe all three parties can learn something from each other. Libertarians can teach the duopoly about integrity; the duopoly can teach libertarians about winning an election or two.


So, the left went farther left, into solidly socialist territory. The right filled the vacuum created by the left. Most of these voters would agree with most of what libertarians stand for but would not give us their support because they believe the line they are fed every four years that “this is the most important election of our lifetimes; much too important to risk wasting your vote on a third party that can’t win anyway.” Until libertarians start to make inroads and start filling small, local elected positions, this will be the story every four years forever. 


Why? Because libertarians, too, have been conditioned. We’ve been conditioned to think that anyone who doesn’t agree with us on every last thought rolling around our skulls is not to be trusted. We eat our own and occupy ourselves fighting one another because we’re too scared to take on Goliath and his ugly sister. I say, pick up your smooth stones and load your slings.


If libertarians do not break free of this self-imposed ideological rigidity, we will never be more than the glorified drinking and debate club we are right now. We have two years to make something happen. Stop looking at one another and start moving toward the enemy. Let’s start treating each election like the most important one of our lifetimes, because that’s what each election is.

 



Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.


The views of the author are his own.

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