And for sure she is the one to do it. She knows all about Wholes...She is in fact trying to dig herself out as we speak....
: As Doug Casey summarized so eloquently, the political system
: in the United States has, like all systems which grow old
: and large, become moribund and corrupt.
: The conventional wisdom holds a decline in voter turnout is a
: sign of apathy. But it may also be a sign of a renaissance
: in personal responsibility. It could be people saying,
: "I won't be fooled again, and I won't lend power to
: them."
: Politics has always been a way of redistributing wealth from
: those who produce to those who are politically favored. As
: H.L. Mencken observed, every election amounts to no more
: than an advance auction on stolen goods, a process few
: would support if they saw its true nature.
: Protesters in the 1960s had their flaws, but they were quite
: correct when they said, "If you're not part of the
: solution, you're part of the problem." If politics is
: the problem, what is the solution? I have an answer that
: may appeal to you.
: The first step in solving the problem is to stop actively
: encouraging it.
: Many Americans have intuitively recognized that government is
: the problem and have stopped voting. There are at least
: five reasons many people do not vote: 1. Voting in a
: political election is unethical. The political process is
: one of institutionalized coercion and force. If you
: disapprove of those things, then you shouldn't participate
: in them, even indirectly.
: 2. Voting compromises your privacy. It gets your name in
: another government computer database.
: 3. Voting, as well as registering, entails hanging around
: government offices and dealing with petty bureaucrats. Most
: people can find something more enjoyable or productive to
: do with their time.
: 4. Voting encourages politicians. A vote against one
: candidate—a major, and quite understandable, reason why
: many people vote—is always interpreted as a vote for his
: opponent. And even though you may be voting for the lesser
: of two evils, the lesser of two evils is still evil. It
: amounts to giving the candidate a tacit mandate to impose
: his will on society.
: 5. Your vote doesn't count. Politicians like to say it counts
: because it is to their advantage to get everyone into a
: busybody mode. But, statistically, one vote in scores of
: millions makes no more difference than a single grain of
: sand on a beach. That's entirely apart from the fact that
: officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want,
: once they are in office.
: Some of these thoughts may impress you as vaguely
: "unpatriotic"; that is certainly not my
: intention. But, unfortunately, America isn't the place it
: once was, either. The United States has evolved from the
: land of the free and the home of the brave to something
: more closely resembling the land of entitlements and the
: home of whining lawsuit filers.
: The founding ideas of the country, which were highly
: libertarian, have been thoroughly distorted. What passes
: for tradition today is something against which the Founding
: Fathers would have led a second revolution.
: This sorry, scary state of affairs is one reason some people
: emphasize the importance of joining the process,
: "working within the system" and "making your
: voice heard," to ensure that "the bad guys"
: don't get in. They seem to think that increasing the number
: of voters will improve the quality of their choices.
: This argument compels many sincere people, who otherwise
: wouldn't dream of coercing their neighbors, to take part in
: the political process. But it only feeds power to people in
: politics and government, validating their existence and
: making them more powerful in the process.
: Of course, everybody involved gets something out of it,
: psychologically if not monetarily. Politics gives people a
: sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves and
: so has special appeal for those who cannot find
: satisfaction within themselves.
: We cluck in amazement at the enthusiasm shown at Hitler's
: giant rallies but figure what goes on here, today, is
: different. Well, it's never quite the same. But the
: mindless sloganeering, the cult of the personality, and a
: certainty of the masses that "their" candidate
: will kiss their personal lives and make them better are
: identical.
: And even if the favored candidate doesn't help them, then at
: least he'll keep others from getting too much. Politics is
: the institutionalization of envy, a vice which proclaims
: "You've got something I want, and if I can't get one,
: I'll take yours. And if I can't have yours, I'll destroy it
: so you can't have it either." Participating in
: politics is an act of ethical bankruptcy.
: The key to getting "rubes" (i.e., voters) to vote
: and "marks" (i.e., contributors) to give is to
: talk in generalities while sounding specific and looking
: sincere and thoughtful, yet decisive. Vapid, venal party
: hacks can be shaped, like Silly Putty, into salable
: candidates. People like to kid themselves that they are
: voting for either "the man" or "the
: ideas." But few "ideas" are more than
: slogans artfully packaged to push the right buttons. Voting
: for "the man" doesn't help much either since
: these guys are more diligently programmed, posed, and
: rehearsed than any actor.
: This is probably more true today than it's ever been since
: elections are now won on television, and television is not
: a forum for expressing complex ideas and philosophies. It
: lends itself to slogans and glib people who look and talk
: like game show hosts. People with really "new
: ideas" wouldn't dream of introducing them to politics
: because they know ideas can't be explained in 60 seconds.
: I'm not intimating, incidentally, that people disinvolve
: themselves from their communities, social groups, or other
: voluntary organizations; just the opposite since those
: relationships are the lifeblood of society. But the
: political process, or government, is not synonymous with
: society or even complementary to it. Government is a dead
: hand on society.