Bread and Circuses

It has never been said better than it was by Robert Heinlein, although H. Beam Piper did a pretty good job as well. This is where America stands today, and before someone starts screaming "their" party line, "you" are part of the problem. I give you:

Bread and Circuses

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”


― Robert A. Heinlein

As H. Beam Piper wrote in one of his stories, "the barbarians are at the gates". 

As you ponder the upcoming election year I want to urge you, each and every one of you, to do something that has become far too uncommon. I want you to stop and try to think like your opponents. Put yourselves in their shoes and and try to understand why they think as they do. Stop belittling them and creating caricature enemies to ease your own guilt. If you do not ever really consider your opponents' point of view as being just as valid as your own, then your point of view is equally worthless.

 If, and only if, you can manage that, then read Heinlein's words again.

Now go out and "vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all."

Having enjoined you to think for yourselves as competent human beings I am now going to sit back and watch in premeditated horror as you ALL do exactly the opposite. Because I am as old as fuck and know better than to expect any better of you.