After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
— Tocqueville
How did we get here? We voted.
Americans worship false gods in a revival tent that comes around every four years. That vote they’re sticking in the ballot box? It is as good as a crumpled-up fiver in the collection plate of a sick religion.
I’m not just talking about the candidates, whether slick or boorish, well-meaning or doctrinaire, venal or stupid. They can be all of these, of course.
I’m talking about the system.
There is no salvation in any of this. Elections cannot nourish our spirits. After the great wheel of power makes another grinding turn, we must remind ourselves and our loved ones that none of this has made us any better.
You see, democracy, as such, makes people desperate to believe lies. It makes us spiteful towards our neighbors. It gives us the illusion that we are somehow smarter, better, more upright people than we are. It gives people the idea that it’s okay to outsource the very idea of charity, the right, and the good to Washington.
We have to use intellectual gymnastics to rationalize such a system. From the social contract to the angels of politics, we operate in comfortable mythology. Deep down, we must know that this is all designed so rival gangs and rival mobs can legally exploit each other—yes—but especially us.
But think of what that must do to our souls over time.
Do you want to help your neighbor? Go help your neighbor. Do you want to solve a social problem? Get to building, coding, serving, or innovating. Because when people work together—like ants or bees—we can do amazing things.
Otherwise, we serve something unspeakable.
The Circumlocution Office
This thing—this apparatus we imagine is good—only permits us to outsource our civic and moral responsibilities to the soulless functionaries who teem in distant capitals, feeding on largesse that should go to better causes.
They operate the Circumlocution Office. Please allow me to indulge a lengthy quote from Charles Dickens who describes it aptly:
The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.
Bureaucrats crusade to raid. They are not our friends. Dickens continues:
Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn’t get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn’t get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.
How have we failed to learn that this is a social cancer? Too many of us are tucked under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution office, at the bottom of which are trough scraps.
Behind the Spectacle
Behind the spectacle — pick your metaphor: circus tent or revival tent — there is violence. We can justify it with terms like “democracy,” “justice,” and “public good.” But it is not good. For this whole thing to operate, well-paid officials must be in charge of jails and men with guns.
They serve power. And they will only serve you or me if that is a means to power.
We timid, industrious animals have arrived on the brink of collapse. And everywhere you look, the proposed solution is to Go out and vote this next election. The right person will save us. If we still can’t see by now that this is all one big spectacle designed to put team sports out in front of an immense system of graft—then we are the fools.
And we deserve to be laughed at.
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage,” said H.L. Mencken. If we don’t laugh, we’ll surely cry. The circus tent is getting bigger. As I write, the monkeys are howling and hurling feces like never before.
There was a time when I wanted to see it all burn down, though not out of some adolescent rage or romantic fantasy, but because I have found a way to stare into this thing—to see it down to its musty basements, its rotten bowels.
But if we stare too long Dear Reader, we might start to see ourselves.
Now, a little grayer in my temples, I don’t want to see it all burn down. But the fire was started long ago. Modern Neros fiddle, making promises they can’t keep. Eventually, the hierarchy will burn. The Circumlocution Office will burn. The Apparatus will burn. We will have to rebuild on scorched earth.
Maybe it’s enough to stand by and watch. And dream. And wonder. What can we build in the ashes?
Note: Some readers will assure us that reform is possible. This election will be the one! I sure hope you’re right. But if you’re not, we have to think about what the renaissance will look like and be prepared.
Max Borders is a senior advisor to The Advocates. See more of his work at Underthrow.
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