off-center;

Two-thirds of Americans favor extending the Bush era tax cuts on wealthy Americans. I’m leaving the justifiability of those tax cuts aside entirely here.  So, it’s worth pointing out that the Congressional election—you know, the one held 36 days ago—was said to have sent a strong signal that “the American people ain’t taking it anymore” and want “more fiscal responsibility” and “less big government handing out our money.”  So, these additional tax expenditures must be coming from decreased federal spending, right, because otherwise it would be complete hypocrisy.  But no, it happened because it’s coupled with an extension in unemployment benefits, also which two out of three Americans seem to dig.  So, we spending more (by cutting taxes) and increasing spending.  These are two things nobody seemed to want, but lots of people seem content with.  

This behavior is pretty typical of voting citizens.  They want everything and don’t want to pay for it.  People can’t help but vote in their self-interest even if two votes (or two ideas) may be in complete contradiction to one another.  There’s your cognitive dissonance in action.  California is a great example of this behavior.  France, too, though most people would never recognize that the U.S. and France have more in common than they think.

My point here—do I have a point?—is that this is a fundamental flaw in a democratic system.  That’s not to say democracy should be done away and we should go back to fiefdoms or live in communes or whatever, but that it is important to recognize the perpetual and hypocritical display of self-interest in voting citizens.  Clearly the blame falls on the citizenry, but it always has, and it ain’t gonna change.  So, it inevitably falls to the government to figure out what to do about it.