When elections are about domination, politics is no longer healthy

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found elections becoming ever more exhausting with each cycle. The nastiness, the bitterness, the name calling, the subtle and sometimes not so subtle insinuations of dark motive and agenda, the fear mongering, the half-truths and in some cases out right lying about issues and opponents is becoming oppressive and unhealthy.

Elections are no longer contests of ideas between parties. They have ceased to be affairs where winners can truthfully say the voters have spoken, and while they have picked us we recognize that we don’t have all the solutions and must work with the vanquished to govern successfully.

Elections have become wars of annihilation. They’ve degenerated into arenas of “us vs. them” where self-focused, narrow-agenda talking heads spew the propaganda line that if we don’t totally defeat “them” we are then all headed to certain ruin and destruction where evil triumphs over good.

Elections have become battlegrounds where not only special interests but the more politically active among the Republican and Democratic fringes are allowed to control the debate. And ever seeking the best ratings, the mainstream media play right along.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why more and more of the electorate is simply tuning out of the voting process, especially during mid-term elections. According to stories from the Washington Post and MSNBC.com, last Tuesday’s estimated 36.5 percent national voter turnout was the lowest election turnout since 1942.

Maine had the highest turnout at 59 percent while Indiana helped suck us down with just 28 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. Here in Washington we were a bit more respectable at a statewide 51.2 percent, according the Secretary of State’s website, with Spokane County right on the average.

Half the eligible voting populace taking time to cast a ballot isn’t bad, especially in midterm elections that have always had lower turnout than during a presidential year. But with people in some countries literally dying trying to vote, you’d think we in the oldest of modern democracies might be a little embarrassed and more resolved to bump our election participation to say, oh, 70 percent.

Dare I say 80 percent?

I’ve always felt that voting is not only about having a say in what goes on, but also about having the right to complain when you don’t like it. Maybe that’s silly, but if you didn’t vote and attempt to change things you don’t feel are right, then by what right do you have to complain?

I think part of the reason turnout has been declining isn’t because of laziness. It’s because people are discouraged.

I’ve heard the phrase “what good will my vote do” from people much more frequently lately, and it’s difficult to disagree, given the influence money and special interest power exerts on elected officials, even if they claim it doesn’t. Maybe for some, the old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, has come to characterize their view of the election process.

But I also think that many people are disgusted with the state of our political system. They’re tired of the screaming they hear from the politically active, not only on radio and TV and in the halls of Congress and the state legislatures, but on the Internet and the sometimes more personal diatribes that takes place on social media and in letters to the editor.

I think it’s true that you are what you eat, and lately our political diet has been nothing but junk food. Screaming, self-focused, accusatory, moronic junk food.

And that isn’t healthy.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].