brockm on Nostr: Elections are a legitimizing function for political power. That is the role they ...
Elections are a legitimizing function for political power. That is the role they play. Approaching electoral choices like a purity test and one of cosmic significance to your character, is downstream of some very impoverished understandings of both democracy and society itself.
Ultimately, we have to confront the pragmatic reality that we are ultimately navigating a hierarchy of good. If you resist this notion, you’re actually participating in a fairly dangerous game of reducing the umbrella of interests the political economy will be responsive to, to the most craven — if for no other reason than smaller polities are easier to capture.
For me, character is just as important as policy in thinking about these things, because the question I ask myself about who I want having power, is not one merely about “what policies does this person support?” — but a more subtle one: “who would I feel more comfortable disagreeing with, knowing the conversation can continue, and that our current policy commitments remain, in perpetuity, provisional?”
Ultimately, we have to confront the pragmatic reality that we are ultimately navigating a hierarchy of good. If you resist this notion, you’re actually participating in a fairly dangerous game of reducing the umbrella of interests the political economy will be responsive to, to the most craven — if for no other reason than smaller polities are easier to capture.
For me, character is just as important as policy in thinking about these things, because the question I ask myself about who I want having power, is not one merely about “what policies does this person support?” — but a more subtle one: “who would I feel more comfortable disagreeing with, knowing the conversation can continue, and that our current policy commitments remain, in perpetuity, provisional?”