In
"The Politics of Happiness" on the Idea
Explorer blog, I summarized why this year's election is likely to
be disappointing, no matter who wins. Despite those reservations,
it's clear that there's more hope of making the necessary changes
with liberals rather than conservatives in power.
The
reasons should be obvious. Today's conservatives generally hate
change, value the concentration of personal power, are willing to put
faith ahead of facts, and don't want to accept responsibility for how
their actions impact anyone outside of a very selective group that
they are willing to treat as equal in value to themselves. Liberals
tend to be the opposite in each respect, which makes them more
inclined to make the changes needed to avoid the hazards we face.
There
is, of course, a continuum between these two extremes, and most of us
lie near the middle. A properly functional political system will
tend to serve this group the best. Unfortunately, that won't be good
enough to avoid massive casualties in the years ahead, because it
necessarily favors the growth in consumption that is the root cause
of those casualties, and because some people in the population are
still okay with sustaining casualties (as long as they're not one of
them). Sadly, our political system isn't even that functional: What
should be a bell curve of politicians that is conservative at one end
and liberal on the other, instead is biased toward the conservative
side.
I
voted for Democrats across the ballot in this election because there is
a chance that they might be open-minded and responsible enough to
consider doing the right things, while Republicans were most likely
to tow the conservative line and proudly drive us into oblivion.
Hopefully, enough others will too.
