Democracy
ecoming

lost cause

in America

PHOENIX, Arizona —
Now that Eastern Europe
has been made safe for
democracy, perhaps some-
thing might be done to
restore if in the United
States of America where
most of the people don't
vote any more.

One of the qualities of an
American which is sometimes
engaging and sometimes irritating
is that he loves to boast. BS
makes him feel better about
himself. his couniry and his
future.

So he tells the world that his is
the biggest and most productive
economy, that his country won
both the great wars and all the
other wars it ever engaged in as
well as that no other nation is as
free and democratic as his.

His troubles, as with all pro-
pagandists, is that he starts to
believe what he is saying. Self
delusion may not do much harm
in the short term, but eventually,
ignorance of one’s condition is
always dangerous.

So it is with the congressional
election just past. Newspapers,
radio and television are filled with
ponderations about the will of the
nation as expressed at the polls.
The whole process is treated with
an almost religious awe.

The truth is that the vast major-
ity of the American people voted
with their bums. They sat on them
instead of going to the polls to
cast a ballot.

Final vote figures are not yet in
for this latest congressional elec-
tion, and when they are issued,
they will get precious little space
in American papers.

However, we have the results of
recent elections to guide us. In the
last congressional elections, two
out of every three American
voters declined to vote.

There is slightly more interest in
a presidential election but even in
that, only half the Americans
went to the polls last time. (In
California, the biggest state of the
union, only a third of the peopie
vote even in the presidential elec-
tions.)

if a new party, cali it the Gera-
nium Party, had captured the
votes of a little more than half of
the Americans who stayed home,
the Geraniums would have
obliterated the Republicans and
Democrats.

The disdain of the Americans
for their system shows in other
ways.

In the election just past, four
out of the 32 Senators up for re-
election were returned by ac-
clamation. In cther countries that
happens to mayors in very small
towns, but it would be unthink-
able in so august a body as the
Senate of the nation.

The story was the same in elec-
tions to the House of Repre-
sentatives. Twenty per cent were
returned unopposed.

In Pennsylvania there was no
contest for a quarter of the seats
and in Jowa no contest for half of
them.

Although this time Madonna
wrapped the American flag over
her capacious mammaries as part
of a get-out-and-vote campaign,
the trend has not been arrested or
reversed.

In the tens of millions, Ameri-
cans show in the clearest way

Paul
Sit. Pierre

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

people can, that they either don't
care about the system or don’t
believe it can serve them,

As with a political phenomenon
in any country, this is not entirely
a bad thing.

In the United States it is neces-
sary to register as a voter. This
would seem likely to produce an
electorate of people who vote with
some political convictions, some
knowledge of the issues, some ca-
pacity to appreciate and use the
democratic process.

In Canada, 75 to 80 per cent of
the people routinely vote, but
these include a fringe group of
people with almost no interest in
politics. Usually, the fringe votes
by whim. Where two parties are
evenly matched, a Canadian elec-
tion will be decided by the whim-
sical voter.

Yet, if the American system
may be said to produce a better
informed, small electorate, it must
be pointed out that in this the
Americans are in tandem with the
old Communist Party system of
Russia.

The average American would
deny this vigorously because he
has been programmed by pro-
Ppaganda to abhor the filthy Reds.
But facts don’t alter.

Both systems were elitist, one
by franchise, the other by party.

In the Soviet Union, before its
recent conversion, the Communist
Party was designed as an elite
group of people expected to have
the knowledge and skills needed
for leadership. It was hard to join
the party. Not many Russians ever
got into it.

Is this really the way Americans
want their democracy to go?

We cannot know. Editors won’t
tell us. They keep writing as if
every American was strong and
free and well-informed and voted
his deep convictions. It is hard for
an editor to adapt to the thought
that most of his readers don’t give
a pinch of cold coon manure for
what he is saying.

They are out there, somewhere,
that half to two thirds of the
Americans who have dropped out.
They are silent, brooding, plan-
ning who can say what for the
future of their great republic.
TTT oe

The Responsibility is Yours.

1-800-663-1441

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