Tobold's Blog
Saturday, September 18, 2021
 
Self-destructive?

In the last 250 years of US history, there have been 1 revolution, 1 civil war, and 59 presidential elections. That would suggest that it is easier to gain political power through votes than it is to gain political power by force. Now it is in the very nature of different political parties that they believe in different things; but it seems that a party that doesn't believe in voting would be ultimately self-destructive. The world has a long history of political activists organizing election boycotts, but in the overwhelming majority of cases the election still was declared valid, and the non-participating side lost by default.

Now a very vain individual losing an election might understandably claim that the vote was rigged against him. There is no forward-looking strategy in that, it is just an expression of personal weakness to be unable to admit defeat. It gets slightly ridiculous if you claim fraud after losing an election decisively. But the psychology of trying to save face in not admitting reality is pretty clear.

However, as a forward-looking political strategy, claiming that elections are fundamentally rigged at a very large scale looks like political suicide for any party. How is a follower of a political party supposed to react when told that his vote isn't counted? He basically has the choice between insurrection and apathy. As I mentioned at the start, in the US real insurrections happen less than once per century, and have a historical 50% success rate. Smaller scale violent protest is more frequent, but has a 0% success rate. With little chance of success for violence, and a natural human preference for apathy, most people who believe that going to vote is useless will simply stay home.

Now obviously the winning side in any election is usually quite certain that everything with the vote was fine. Having won the previous election makes the supporter of a party more convinced that his vote made a difference, and thus motivates him to go voting the next time around. So the risk of a party promoting voting apathy has a potential of becoming a death spiral: In a close election the more motivated side wins, then gets even more motivated, while the party of apathy loses, and becomes even more convinced that voting is of no use. And then having made voting more difficult can really backfire.

My prediction still is that this isn't going to end well. Even as a foreigner just skimming US news, it is noticeable that losing politicians talking of violence as a solution to "take our country back" is on the rise. If that trends isn't reversed, they might take their country back all the way to 1861.


Comments:
"[C]laiming that elections are fundamentally rigged at a very large scale looks like political suicide for any party."

Only if the other party doesn't!
 
Maybe the fundamental issue is that elections can be framed as winning and losing due to lack of participants?

If there were more parties and slim chances for an absolute majority, every party would strive for the biggest piece of the cake, but coalitions would become necessary and thus allowing smaller parties to "win" as well.
 
Even as a foreigner just skimming US news, it is noticeable that losing politicians talking of violence as a solution to "take our country back" is on the rise. If that trends isn't reversed, they might take their country back all the way to 1861.

In terms of attitude, yes. Or perhaps Jim Crow era (or even South Africa Apartheid) politics, where there's always the Other at the bottom. It's a very seductive viewpoint, where you can blame everything on "those people" rather than either take responsibility for your own choices or admit that maybe all of those things that people spend time demonizing (unions, government assistance, etc.) aren't as bad as people thought.
 
Eh as much as the media focuses on the extremes and all we hear about is one existential crisis after another I still don't believe a full on Civil War in the US is close to happening.

I could see small January 6th style insurrections in certain states but a full blown Civil War 2? No. As much as can be said about right wing groups owning guns the reality is they wouldn't stand up to the US military.

For Civil War to happen you would need enough of the leadership in the military willing to go along with it and Trump does not have that support. Even in the allies he does have in government the more powerful members (McConnell, Desantis, Abbot, etc) want power in our current model of government, they don't want to secede from it.

Without major backing from military leadership there is no Civil War.
 
I forgot to add that I could see the US becoming a functional one party state, through packing of the courts, more gerrymandering and continued implementation of voting restrictions long before I see a Civil War happening.
 
"1 revolution, 1 civil war, and 59 presidential elections"

Don't forget 4 Presidential assassinations.
 
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