I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I leave it up to you”
Thus sang Alvin Lee of Ten Years After in 1971. Driving along one morning, as I was clicking through the satellite radio channels, I landed on Classic Vinyl and caught the song in mid-play. Being a fan of both the song and the band (Mr. Lee, R.I.P. was a stunningly talented guitarist), I settled in for the balance of the song. The DJ, Earle Bailey, commented on the “subtle social commentary” contained in the lyrics immediately afterward, stating that social attitudes have changed a lot since then. Now, I suspect he was referring to the balance of the lyrics, rather than the chorus:
Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more— Chorus —
Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money, monopoly— Chorus —
World pollution, there’s no solution
Institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor
Them and us, stop the war— Chorus —
Either way, I found myself yelling at the radio in disagreement. Abdication of responsibility is the crux of the chorus, and tired liberal tropes such as Malthusian overpopulation concerns, redistribution of wealth, environmental concerns, and so forth are evident in the body of the lyrics. We hear as much about such things today as they did 40+ years ago.
But, I’m not inspired to deconstruct those particulars at the moment. Rather, I wonder at why and how Mr. Bailey thinks that this social commentary isn’t still relevant – and more to the point, the implication that others feel as he does. His comment was just a bit of throwaway filler between songs, but it reflects a myopia regarding the core truth of the chorus.
The nation, and indeed the world, is awash in people who don’t care for the current state of things, who would like to “do something” to make things better, who don’t have any particulars on what they’d do, and who are all too happy to assign others to working out those particulars. In doing so, they forego the responsibility associated with making changes. They’ll happily take credit if the changes produce good results, but blame for failure will be pinned on the doers.
What’s most troubling, though, is that the act of assigning someone else to act is itself considered having done “good.” Tell someone “help the poor” and the job is done. Did the poor get helped? Did the help actually work out well? Were there unforeseen issues e.g. the help is such that it encourages more people to go on the dole rather than work? Those aren’t questions that get asked. The abdication of responsibility is complete – the presumption is that the instruction covers everything. And, as we’ve seen so often, if the abdicator notices, some time down the road, that things haven’t gotten better, the immediate response is to assign someone else to do the same thing, often in the same manner.
Elect a politician who promises to make schools better. Schools don’t get better. Next election cycle, either the politician’s gone, or he says he needs more time (and money) to do the job. Is there an assessment of whether his approach had merit, or is his word merely taken at face value? Would someone offering up excuses for failure be given a pass in the private sector in this fashion?
Representative government is hard. Its success depends to a significant degree on the involvement of those represented. And, it also depends on not fully trusting those elected, otherwise we wouldn’t need a Constitution that spells out what they’re allowed to do and declares everything else off limits. It’s far easier to simply say “He seems like a good guy, I’ll hand over power to him and go about my life,” despite countless past bad experiences with politicians abusing their power and failing to live up to their promises. Or, even worse, “my party has vetted him, the party leaders (whose names I don’t eve know) say he’s the guy for the job, so I’m going to root, root, root for the home team, and go home satisfied that I’ve been a good citizen.”
I’d venture to say that 90% of eligible voters are “abdicators.” Half of them don’t vote. While it’s a reality that one person’s vote is utterly irrelevant (Reason did a piece on this around the 2012 election) I’d venture that only a very few of those who don’t vote do so out of overt recognition that their vote doesn’t matter. So, while I won’t call someone who deliberately withholds his vote an abdicator (in fact, it’s the opposite), I don’t think there’s a lot of these folks in the tally.
Of the half that do vote, 2/3 or more vote for “their” party, which is to say the party their family grew up supporting, or the party they identified with when they reach voting age, or the party that their cultural subset traditionally supports. That gets us mighty close to 90% without even considering how many “swing” voters simply pick the guy they like better and don’t think about it again until the next election.
It’s not easy to remain involved between elections, or even to get involved leading up to an election, even going by the “paying attention” definition of “involved.” But, unless we pay attention, unless we look at what the politicians are doing, and demand they change their ways if what they’re doing doesn’t work, we can’t expect them to honor our wishes or their promises. And, we can’t expect problems to be solved merely because we wish them to be.
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