The Vagabond Blog

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#184 Democracy is broken

I recently saw a YouTube video that articulated very clearly my foggy thoughts about democracy. I include the link for two of these videos below, but I thought I would paraphrase what they said, because it just really struck a chord with me.

https://youtu.be/fLJBzhcSWTk?si=7W0BeG4S59VF1GXf

https://youtu.be/0au4gWNauwI?si=mJSqHM6oB_9_navo

When I am watching news services like the BBC, and even on occasion when I cannot escape it, Fox or CNN, I have always been frustrated by the fact that these ‘talking heads’ are talking about things as if it is possible to fix the problems.

As far as I'm concerned, one cannot change or fix anything because the system, “democracy”, in most countries is completely broken due to two major causes.

The first is that the vast majority of people who are elected into office are simply not qualified to be in office. Being elected is a matter of popularity and not suitability.

And this stems from the second major cause of democracy being broken. The reason these unsuitable people are elected is because of the people who are allowed to vote.

Not everybody should be allowed to vote. The vast majority of “the people” are not qualified or capable of being able to vote effectively. The reasons for this are probably many, but for me, it boils down to the fact that most people are poorly educated.

When you are not educated, how can you be capable of judging whether a person is qualified to be able to hold an office? You can barely hold on and survive in life yourself, how on earth can you properly judge whether a person is capable of executing properly in the government of an entire country?

In the United States, a democracy about which I know a little, simply due to having studied history, I think the system is irretrievably broken.

The politicians are in charge, along with the career bureaucrats who support them, and none of them are interested in changing the system. Gerrymandering? Of course they're not going to fix that, because you have entire teams of people who are dedicated to tweaking that system in order to be able to skew election results. Term limits? Of course not. They are needed; that should be obvious. And people have said that they are needed. It will be a cold day in a non-existent hell before the people in power will ever allow that to happen. Why would they do that? It directly impacts their own power. Look at the team of geriatrics in Congress and the Senate. See the link below. As the writer says, if you are restricted from renting a car due to your age, why should you be allowed to run a country?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/letters/aging-politicians.html?unlocked_article_code=tW0CKtIZAx7mbvsQjJEjs6iIRBTfgr1zQ4ne_KpuUzHH-XYvyZqbkL0AyaR3YlzzI0HfR9o6OV2hhdAwfBRtjG6qXTjmvZGjcviow3fLBiYYLU550H16dAdjSaBh-f_YYu-CgBtBzQ21U485ruLanj-Kdrjsd5dl_p0TUF8tAXmV8Dh0pkXcFwFrv8zjGDtSEPSKThVa8IUQKwTRwME-5FPYrSjWEZNipENCWbzoRPMrJhQyZY9tp1Y_syjJlxjQ72wBvggxR1X5G_Id_QtFKkuIv5bckhkFlXRxthDzNrvEzsRJdhc_djZfFXurZVnzM3Z1pjuCQlHS_OQbemI2pU-praA&smid=url-share

And that is scary. Some of these politicians are in their late 80s and are publicly and visibly not at the top of their game. Why on earth are they allowed to continue in office? Very simply, it's a question of power. These senior people are on the most important committees, and their parties do not want to lose that footprint unless they have a way to be able to immediately get another one of their representatives into the same position. Plus, you obviously have the megalomaniacal ego and greed of the incumbents. Of course, they dress it up in all kinds of fancy language, but in essence, it is greed for power.

I wrote this article because the other day, in the lobby of the hotel where I'm staying, I got involved in a discussion on politics (why the hell did I do that?) with the elderly owner of the hotel. I got mildly upset by the conversation because the gentleman (who is, however, an extremely nice person, an Englishman) was trying to speak and argue about why things were happening, such as Putin invading Ukraine, the actions of Joe Biden, and the actions of other leaders, etc. And I could not get him to understand that it was pointless to discuss stuff like this because there is no logic behind their actions.

Well, of course there is ‘logic’ behind their actions, but it is predicated on protectionism of their own power and status, not on any real logic that is based on benefiting the world. And I sincerely believe that in some cases like Putin, you are dealing with somebody who is mentally ill.

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times column recently wrote an editorial on what an incredibly sad waste of money time and resources and people the Ukraine invasion is.

I quote, “What is so evil — beyond the death and pain and trauma and destruction he has inflicted on so many Ukrainians — is that at a time when climate change, famine, health crises and so much more are stressing Planet Earth, the last thing humanity needed was to divert so much attention, collaborative energy, money and lives to respond to Putin’s war to make Ukraine a Russian colony again.”

I am afraid that my strategy in my “legacy years”, is to keep my head down, stay under the radar, and try to live my life as simply as possible. I don't think that is the coward’s way out, but I think I only have about 20 years left, and I do not want to spend them trying to fight back the tide of corruption and inefficiency that is ‘democracy’ in today's world. And a related YouTube link about the simple life.

https://youtu.be/ZHCgZ1wmhgw?si=3nr6pUWXDUKUOkB6

Please do leave a comment if you have read this far, I would be very interested to know your opinion.

Other updates:

  • I’m going to a wedding in France in February, so I’m sprinting to improve my Spanish and French. It is the wedding of an Argentinian friend and her French fiancé. I’m quite looking forward to that.

  • 30 days since my renunciation, and no update from the State Department.

  • Amusingly, an organization in France (Accidental Americans) has launched a class action law suit against the State Department for the sky-high fee they charge for renunciation, and they (the State Department) are apparently thinking of putting it back to $450. But no refunds. :-)

  • I am going to Thailand to finish getting my retirement visa. I will do the Philippines next year.

  • I’ve started work on my final tax return so that I can pull the trigger as soon as the forms are available next year, approximately in February.