Originally published at: Aria Listed As Anti-Democracy Extremist | Free Keene
Recently here in the federal prison that I currently call “home,” there was a fight between two miserable, awful human beings known around the unit as the Nazi and the Swindler. Even more recently, Granite State Watch released a list of anti-democracy extremists; I am on that list, and it brought much joy to this, the eighth month of my eighteen month prison sentence, to know that I struck such a profound fear in them that even the rattling of my chains echoes in their minds. Of course, Granite State Watch is correct in their assessment; I am an anti-democracy extremist. When all the cards are laid on the table, it’s shown that they, too, are anti-democracy extremists. Most people are.
I don’t simply mean the Socialist and Communist leftists clamoring for a dictatorship of the proletariat, although, as they’re commonly used, “dictatorship’ and “democracy” would be mutually exclusive. I also don’t mean the anti-democracy representatives who voted against CACR32, thereby prohibiting New Hampshire voters from voting on a ballot question, although those state reps who voted against it, in literal terms, voted against democracy. Instead, I mean only to point out that anyone of reason who has been educated past the third grade is likely to be staunchly anti-democracy, because democracy is stupid.
No person of sense would poll the ignorant masses for a medical diagnosis, or help with any problem of significance. The average person is simply not educated or equipped to answer most specialized questions, but, because of the Dunning-Kruger Effect and sheer incompetent arrogance, they not only will give a terrible and incorrect answer, but will then vigorously defend that wrong answer when assailed by facts and logic. We saw this during the Covid-19 pandemic, when suddenly everyone was an expert virologist, biologist, and epidemiologist overnight, all without any education or training whatsoever. And nearly everyone among this hitherto unknown mass of doctors with their wildly differing “expert” opinions was willing to fight and defend whatever their dumbass opinion happened to be. The side calling me an anti-democracy extremist was, in fact, the side that coined the term “Covidiot” to describe such people.
It shouldn’t need to be pointed out, but the ones the left calls “Covidiots” vote, and one vote cast by an idiot cancels out entirely a vote cast by an intelligent person. Imagine some respectable citizen taking several hours from their busy life to contemplate and research the issues, reach an informed decision, learn about the candidates, and then proudly cast their vote in an election, only for it to be nullified by a slack-jawed yokel whose entire political ideology is “I ain’t wearin’ no face diaper!” So, yes, I must confess a substantial degree of disdain and contempt for any political system that, as a matter of foundational policy, weighs these two people and their opinions, and finds them to be equally worthy of consideration and application.
Further, it does not matter where one falls on the political compass; the most common perspective is that the opinion holder is correct and, as deviation from that opinion increases, so does the stupidity required to disagree with the first person’s obviously correct position. Someone who disagrees only slightly is “only a little stupid,” while someone who diametrically opposed is a mouth-breathing troglodyte unworthy of being considered human.
What does any of this have to do with the Nazi and the Swindler? It dawned on me, the day that I learned about Granite State Watch and their list, that the Nazi and the Swindler are the perfect symbol of presidential elections, especially in recent years. Here are the two absolutely worst human beings we can find. One is a large, old, overweight, vile, racist, homophobic bully who more or less prides himself on those characteristics, and he is fighting a smaller, older dementia patient who may or may not understand where he is and who may or may not be pooping his pants. As South Park said, it’s always a big, giant douche and a turd sandwich. It’s always a Nazi versus a Swindler.
All this said, the United States isn’t a democracy. It is a constitutional republic that uses the democratic means (e.g., voting) to ostensibly achieve its ends. Without the ability to Google things, I believe it was Winston Churchill who said something like, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for the others that have been tried.” Just as the constitutional republic was meant to be a “government that governs least,” because it was recognized that all government is evil and horrible (Yes, even the American government), democracy was never thought to be good, but was instead only the least terrible option available at the time. We shouldn’t be so enamored with our own supposed greatness that we lose perspective on how awful the system is.
Even with the much-touted “checks and balances” of the system, there has been created an invincible and virtually omnipotent administrative state, a government by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, and the supposedly powerful people, such as Senators and Presidents, are at best powerless figureheads who cannot effect change any more than a brave fool could use a paper fan to drive away a hurricane. Yet even the uselessness of the offices does not open them to the public at large; candidates are carefully screened and selected, only after after a lifetime of service and fervent loyalty to the system and the duopoly controlling it. Knowledge of this apparatus is so widespread that the most common response, when I secured the Republican nomination for sheriff of Cheshire County in New Hampshire in 2020, was, “How did this happen? Why didn’t the power structures that control candidate selection keep Aria out?”
When the average person praises democracy, they are expressing love and admiration for this nightmarish administrative leviathan that allows them to cast their vote, as equals to idiots, in a contest between a Nazi and a Swindler, when the outcome has no measurable impact anyway. To suggest that we only need “more informed” voters, better candidates, more transparency, or whatever other platitude one wants to toss out, is to suggest that we need only a better fan to divert the hurricane.
A bit afraid of what Aria wrote that might be wrong or I’d disagree with… or what not. That said I can’t fault her for moving to NH and actually doing something. In many respects she’s a great example of an activist doing exactly what the Free State Project is all about (or claims to be about, whether or not those in leadership positions at the FSP Inc are good at leading this community or not… though that said we have lots of good leaders… most of whom lack titles of any kind).