We Need a Plan

Tomorrow is the biggest day of primary voting in the U.S., and what should be the most active political day of the year. Incumbents should be facing constructive criticism and alternative platforms from within their own party, and party affiliates should be cheerfully discussing the shape their policies will take going forward, with plans to vote accordingly.

Instead, a disheartened populace regards the advent with, on the whole, little consideration or investment. And while the lack of corrective action is frustrating, the feeling is understandable. The electoral process and those agencies that oversee it at the highest level are now so choked with corruption and systemic fraud that it’s hard to judge election results as wholly valid. And though the prospect frightens me, it is very possible that there is currently no path forward to achieve functional democracy through voting alone.

There’s an unstated wisdom within the US that elections decide anything, and thus that any group who are disenfranchised or disadvantaged are at their own fault for their lack of democratic involvement. The reality, of course, is far more complicated and uglier. In various small, but growing ways, the elements of our government that keep it within some ambit of public control are being removed. There are enough bad agents within the upper government that they may be able to simply change the result of an election through procedurally illegitimate but technically legal means.

In preparation for this possibility, and as a bulwark against governmental failure of all kinds, the only proposal I can envisage is a plan to develop a new alternative government. The process would presumably be similar to the original process by which our nation was formed: groups of motivated persons promoting the idea of a new way forward. The ultimate goal, to choose representatives within the populace to join in a constitutional congress and develop a comprehensive plan for a new government, which would then be ratified and consequently enforced.

This is an unbelievably complex task, not to mention a dangerous one, since all factions within the existing government would naturally oppose it as a threat to their own power. It is staggeringly unlikely to succeed. However, even making the attempt can achieve some good, as spreading the idea of an alternative, functioning government can be used with care to spur proper behavior within current government agents.

I lack the social and logistical skills to spearhead such a project, but nor am I interested in doing so. My ideal society is one without strong leaders, and I will always promote that ideal. In the meantime, however, this is the message that I urgently wish to share: consider the possibility of forming a new government, one able to fulfill the basic requirements of such which our current system is fundamentally unable to achieve, and discuss this possibility with others. Spread discourse as far as you can.