In November of this year, a new U.S. president will be elected, but after the recent debate, the tension over this decision is at a peak. People seem very discouraged, scared even. Neither main candidate seems right to a great number of people, and recently I’ve seen the term “double hater” in the news.
Double haters are those individuals who see both candidates as wrong on so many levels that they view themselves as having to choose between two evils. There seems to be a lot of cognitive dissonance concerning our country as well as our political system.
On the one hand, many Americans hold the belief that the United States is the greatest country in the world and democracy the best form of government, while on the other hand, many hold our political leaders in contempt. For them, the word politician is synonymous with words like corrupt.
I can relate to this dissonance. I am a product of the public school system. I was raised in a time when the Pledge of Allegiance was still being recited at the beginning of each school day. I was taught that the American dream became a reality for the many thousands of immigrants who struggled to get here and worked hard after they did. America meant freedom and opportunity.
I was taught that our democracy was the best form of government on earth and that my participation in it was a privilege that I dare not waste by not voting. The right to vote was akin to a kind of religious rite of passage, and while I did not necessarily share in the zealousness of many voters, I looked forward to exercising my right when I became an adult.
In my late teens and early 20s, I became determined to engage responsibly in the democratic process. I began paying closer attention to candidates, watching debates and attempting to research what each one stood for. I found it all surprisingly confusing. I was supposedly prepared for this. I had received a government school education, after all. I was taught what it meant to be a good citizen, and I did not want to take that for granted, yet here I was, completely confused.
What I expected from my participation in the democratic process was the exercise of my right to contribute to the running of my country. What I got was something akin to a circus where my own vote seemed to mean next to nothing. I began to ask myself, am I in any sense truly represented by those in any elected office? Given that the average number of citizens each district representative represents is more than 760,000, I wondered how one person could realistically represent so many people?
I began to reflect and wonder whether I really had a solid understanding of what democracy actually is. I found myself time and again feeling blown about by whatever new issue was being hailed as the hill to die on for each particular candidate.
But true liberty is not about issues, rather it is founded on the belief that each individual may, in the words of Ron Paul, “exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others.” Therefore, any form of interference in another’s life is a violation of the basic human right to live life as one chooses. Now, I may not necessarily agree with how a person chooses to live; however, as long as their choices do not interfere with or violate another person’s life or property, or my life or my property, then I must let them do it. That is true liberty, true freedom. This was the philosophical foundation that I now realized must govern and restrain how I participated in the democratic process.
I had previously been taught that my personal liberty was intimately tied to my ability to express my desires through representative government. “We the people,” after all. According to this oft- repeated phrase, the divide between the government and myself is nonexistent. I am the government. But how can this be true? At best, our nation is ruled by majority, and much of the majority has opinions that differ strongly from my own.
I am not the only one to experience this kind of existential crisis related to our country. In fact, trust in governmental institutions is at or near record lows. I think it’s fair, therefore, if you are one of the double haters, to ask yourself these questions:
- Am I in any real sense represented by this government?
- What is the role of government?
- What is democracy?
- Is America a democracy, and does this form of government actually secure one’s liberties?
Murray Rothbard, an American economist, once wrote:
We must challenge the very idea of a radical separation between something that is ‘true in theory’ but ‘not valid in practice.’ If a theory is correct, then it does work in practice; if it does not work in practice, then it is a bad theory.
Politics isn’t for everyone, and political philosophy can be complicated to understand; however, if we are going to participate in the running of our country by voting, we owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to take our concerns about our government seriously. We can trust our gut and look beyond this election and think more critically about the running of our country as a whole and ask the hard questions. We owe it to ourselves to ask those hard questions, and we owe it to the generations after us.
I love my country. It’s beautiful. I love what it stands for: liberty, solidarity with the hardworking underdog, opportunity, and freedom to worship as I choose. I don’t want to settle for being a double hater anymore; do you?
7 comments
7 Comments
OttoZeit
July 26, 2024, 3:55 pm"{ I don’t want to settle for being a double hater anymore…"
And do WHAT about it?
REPLYJONATHAN JOSE COLMENARES GARCIA@OttoZeit
July 26, 2024, 4:27 pmRead the text again!
REPLYJoeD@JONATHAN JOSE COLMENARES GARCIA
July 26, 2024, 5:08 pmI read the text, again!!.and it gives no indication of what there is to be done, other than "ask ourselves hard questions." Maybe an actual response would be in order instead of your flippant reply.
REPLYTim
July 26, 2024, 4:48 pmThere is a very logical reason why our founders chose not to select democracy, but rather a constitutional republic. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZOtEbwwfOM and http://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/america-republic-not-democracy
REPLYKalikiano Kalei
July 26, 2024, 4:56 pm"Yes" to most of what you've opined here, Heather, but 'hater' is too strong a word to describe people who view things a bit more equitably and intuit that neither of these party candidates have the necessary, requisite skill sets, wisdom, sagacity and balanced social assets to meet the needs of our vast and complex nation.
'Choice between two evils" is also stretching that same point, but in practical, functional terms our choice does seem to be between too equally unsuitable prospective national leaders.
There is a huge element of ageism implicit in all this kerfuffle, since older individuals (who have also had the opportunity to witness the inconsistencies and failings of humankind for a much longer period) don't generally suffer the idealistic, unrealistic enthusiasms of much younger people whose world views tend to be far more callow, incomplete and narrowly focused.
What should be utterly clear is that our erstwhile ‘democracy’ (or ‘democratic republic, if you wish) has irretrievably changed, since white European forebears set our national system in operation, almost 300 years ago. And it's no longer the same country we were born in.
It is therefore both unrealistic and near-impossible to hold our country to former high standards of strict ethical Euro-morality, behavior and collective (mutual) responsibility, and it is now, as Huxley so presciently put it, a ‘Brave New Word’ wherein anything goes.
I personally do not, as a student of philosophy and history, believe America to be ‘the greatest nation in the world’ but I do regard it as the bravest social experiment ever undertaken by free people to extend those rights and privileges to the greatest number of individuals. Sadly, that inspiring flag you and I were both raised to honor and respect no longer represents a nation which deluded Marxist/Marcusian ideologues would have become a socialist state (perhaps a purer ‘social democracy’).
As many Western philosophers have noted throughout the preceding millennia, the only thing that never changes is change itself! We must functionally embrace that truism and adapt ourselves accordingly, like it or not.
Personally? I see America already slipping irrevocably over the razor-edge of the abyss and hold no great hopes (famously expressed by Thucydides as ‘danger’s comforter’ and therefore an expression of rank naivete) that America as the nation we now know will endure in years to come, a vision also shared with Victor Davis Hanson in his 2024 release, ‘The End of Everything.’
Yes, it is time for younger individuals to step up to the plate and continue to safeguard our precious and hard-earned freedoms, but thanks in no small part to the corrosive effects of rampant materialistic superfluity, aided and facilitated by the electronic communications revolution (read: social media, the internet, etc.), those young people must first be adequately tutored and prepared to bear this great responsibility in an unflinching and resolute manner that reflects maturity, individual and collective responsibility and regard for the common weal, while under constant threat by forces of selfish, narcissistic greed (corporations, acquisitive wealth, et al).
Trump, regrettably, is one of the last charismatic champions of American individualism. Harris is, by contrast, merely a hollow shell filled to the brim with the dark machinations of soulless ideologues whose intents she has absolutely no comprehension of. If you insist on putting it in that religious lesser of ‘two evils’ frame of reference, yes, it’s a hellish choice and we shall be forced to, as Sam Clemens so famously phrased it in 1884, “…pay our money and take our chances.”
Thanks for some stimulating fodder for further cogitations.
REPLYJoeD@Kalikiano Kalei
July 26, 2024, 5:13 pm"bravest social experiment ever undertaken by free people to extend those rights and privileges to the greatest number of individuals"
This in and of itself makes the US the greatest country ever. ALL countries are social experiments, some just last longer than others. And if freedom for more people in the history of the world doesn't put it at the top of the heap, what does? Healthcare for all?
REPLYJerryR
July 27, 2024, 7:32 amThis is a shallow article. It assumes that it is the person one is voting for. Maybe at one distant time.
I don’t approve of any Democrat as a politician because they currently represent a dysfunctional view of society and couldn’t imagine voting for any of them. I don’t like Trump as a person but he has a track record of governance and represents a group that generally promotes a functioning society.
So there is no big choice here. It is obvious. At least to what is rational.
The country that once existed that the author loves, no longer exists. I loved it too. But we now have a constituency that is divided on extremely differing goals that are not reconcilable. No society can exist this way. Does she believe “the live and let live” attitude exists in most. How could it without a common philosophy on how to decide what is best.
A defining difference, how many today are willing to die for their country. I came across a photo of my wife’s grandfather’s military unit from WWII. There must have been over 500 hundred of them, all ready to die for their country and there were thousands of such units. Does anyone know a liberal who is ready to die for the USA?
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