So like everyone else, I’ve been listening to the president and various other politicians and interested parties bemoaning the recent vote against background checks for gun sales. I, too, think it’s unfortunate that this legislation did not pass, but I do not blame the senators who voted against it. I blame my fellow citizens who are too apathetic to get involved in the democratic process.
There is a very simple reason why relatively small “special interest groups” like the NRA wield so much power. It’s not because of the money. It’s because they consistently show up on election day and vote. Senators represent voters. A large number of people are under the misapprehension that elected officials represent the general population. They don’t. In order to remain a senator, they have to do what the people who vote want them to do. And sadly, an awful lot of people just don’t vote.
I volunteered recently for a political campaign here in Massachusetts. At first, I was genuinely excited. I thought I was going to have an opportunity to debate the issues with fellow citizens, and perhaps have greater access to the candidate to make my views known. What a fool I was. Let me introduce you to a new term: GOTV. This stands for “get out the vote.” As a volunteer in the campaign, I quickly discovered that “issues” were not the issue at all. The entire purpose of every single volunteer for that organization was to walk around town knocking on doors of strangers, finding people who were already willing to vote for that candidate, and then, to somehow wheedle/cajole these people into actually showing up at the polls on election day. I cannot begin to tell you how disgusted I was to discover just how apathetic so many of my fellow citizens are. Thousands of people have fought and died for our right to vote, and yet a large percentage of our fellow citizens simply don’t bother. If you are looking for a place to point a shaming finger, that’s the real place to go.
It is because of our own collective apathy and laziness that small single-minded minorities are able to hold so much sway over national policy. If a few of these mostly Republican senators had voted for this background check bill, how many of you (who are now pointing a shaming finger at them) would have pulled out your checkbook and sent them some money for their next election cycle? How many of you would have taken a day off from a busy day at work to volunteer to help drive their potential supporters to the polls on a cold raw rainy November election day? How many of you would make the effort, four or six years down the road, to vote for them in a virtually unadvertised September primary election? Compare that apathy to the people who are very incensed about this issue on the other side, and how much effort they are consistently willing to put in to keeping one senator in, and keeping another one out.
This is democracy at work. It only works for the “majority” when the majority actually participates. Don’t blame the senators. What’s “fair”and “right” has nothing to do with it. These senators are not all-powerful. They are just doing what their supporters . . . i.e., the people who actually vote for them . . . wanted them to do. If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame the apathetic non-voters who think that elected officials will ignore what gets them elected in the first place and “just do what’s right” every time, without our input or support on election day. As Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
© Justin Locke
