Equality by lot

Phil Wilson writes in Z about the horrors of electoralism and “the most enormous obstacle to sortition” – the fact that those who claim to be against the horrors cannot bring themselves to consider the democratic alternative.

A Plea for Sortition and Direct Democracy in the Wake of the Epstein Files

The Epstein Files do not warrant shock and horror. A quiet nod of the head along with maybe a lopsided, very restrained smile might suffice. I will consider my most cynical smirk – the one conveying a sort of fatalistic disgust normally employed for train delays, and added charges to my cell phone bill. These redacted millions of pages contain just enough information to let us know two things: 1) the rich pukes who run our lives with godly, bored indifference, have been raping, torturing and maybe sometimes murdering trafficked children, and 2) absolutely nothing will be done about it.

The Epstein Files are not a revelation, but a reminder. Why feign horror when the feral dog shits on the rug? Do some of us accept that capitalism performs epic acts of mass murder and torture, yet blanche in utter disbelief at the sadistic hobbies that elites enjoy in private? Did anyone imagine that Larry Summers and Peter Thiel spent their down time delivering blankets to the nearest tent city?

The Epstein Files shows the public the private face of societal suicide. When psychopaths seize control of governmental and corporate institutions, they gain the cover needed to act out the most predatory sexual fantasies, but that is nothing compared to what corporate and political policy inflicts upon countless millions of victims. If we are horrified at the private evils committed by Epstein’s clients, we ought to be far more distraught over the public crimes of these morally castrated pillars of capitalism – war, colonialism, privatized prisons, privatized hospitals, privatized armies and the unmitigated project of environmental ruin and mass extinction.

We have voted and revoted. The ballot box leads inevitably to Trump. We can’t vote our way out of this. It will take massive resistance – Minneapolis writ across the face of the country. I believe that the goal of resistance ought to be the end of electoral politics, the end of parties, the end of super-PACs, the end of politics as mass spectacle. The biggest challenge involves massive, organized, committed civil disobedience – but that will yield nothing without a vision of renewal.

The solution is in plain sight.

[S]o-called electoral democracy created Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and fascism. Electoral democracy, as I have repeatedly argued, is a front for capitalism. Corporate goons select your candidates and howl with laughter as you vote for one or the other of the two handpicked psychopaths who lie to you with all the conviction of a battery powered parrot.

The Epstein Files might be seen as being a perfect publicity stunt sent by fate to bolster the cause of “direct democracy.” The only way to prevent ambitious psychopaths from “Bogarting” power, is to replace them with randomly chosen citizens. Once you allow people to “seek power” you open the floodgates of oligarchy, autocracy and fascism. Sortition inverts the process of governance – rather than having people seek power, power seeks people. Members of citizen’s assemblies are drafted at random, thereby destroying identity politics – statistical chance balances the face of power. Half of the members of a citizens assembly will be women, very few will be wealthy, Ivy League grads will all but disappear from the halls of power. Nurses, teachers, palm readers and mechanics will serve terms – not many lawyers will gum up the works. Racial and sexual discrimination have no effect on citizen’s assemblies. Random chance gently empowers everyone.

I believe that sortition will lead to socialism. If corporations lose the ability to fund campaigns, the magical grip that capitalism has over our contrived schemas will all but evaporate. Ordinary people. left to their own devices, will discover socialism with wide-eyed-wonder.

The most enormous obstacle to sortition is the obliviousness of the leftwing alternative media sphere. Who is talking about sortition? Nobody! And yet we feign shock and horror when capitalist electoral politics deliver clients to Jeffrey Epstein. Until the people hold power we will have colonial crimes, inequity, climate ruin, war and the faux meritocratic con-artists that spend their down time molesting children.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition |