America’s voting proclivity — voting for the lesser of two evils — has led to a downward trend in the quality of candidates for political leadership, as well as to a decline in advocacy for democratic principles. The aftermath of the fall 2016 and 2024 elections clarify this moral quagmire. America’s actual national rulers, the Plutocrats, control elected and appointed officials. They possess unlimited resources and readily bestow financial rewards for acquiescence with their desires, driven by profit and greed, and inflict severe punishments for defiance. The cost of political campaigns and the outcomes we have seen are illustrative.
Political spending on presidential and congressional races, combined, has increased by over 560% since 1984, to $16 billion in 2024. (US NEWS, Nov 1, 2024, FORBES, Nov 4, 2024)
These funds are split at a ratio of 57% to 43% in favor of Republicans. Democratic control at the state level, for example, has been reduced to levels not seen since the Civil War.
This corrupted political manifestation, in large measure, hinges on a Tacit Conspiracy because the characters in this Seditious Machination — the Supreme Monied Elites and the incumbent and aspiring leaders in both parties — do not have to meet face-to-face or even communicate with each other electronically. The politicians in the spectacle, as opposed to public servants, already know what actions will get them campaign funds and what actions won’t.
Candidates who operate openly in accordance with Plato’s definition of Virtuous Leadership seldom get the resources necessary for election, especially for state and national positions. To be financially-viable candidates for the higher offices, politicians’ campaign rhetoric must indicate that they will kowtow to the party line, and that they will toe that line if they get into office. After they are elected, if they do depart from the Sub Rosa contract, reprisals are likely to be swift, vicious and open. Merely associating with people and groups that express unsanctioned views can result in retaliations. Incumbents and aspirants for leadership know that reelection rates are exceedingly high. All they have to do is get into office and play ball, no matter how vile or ineffective they are. They must go-along if they want to stay-long.
The electorate, at least that part which shows up on election day, many having been miseducated and duped by duplicitous Machiavellian devotees – Vote for me and I will set you free, as the Temptations sang — have become unwitting coconspirators in this democratic charade which has led to our label as a Flawed Democracy, placing us alongside countries such as India, Argentina and Colombia. (SOURCE: The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016).
CASE IN POINT: In 2016, only 9% of Americans expressed “a great deal/quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. However, incumbent reelection rates in the 2016 General Election were 98% for house members, and 93% for senators (GALLOP, June 13, 2016).
The Democracy-debilitating cycle has been perpetuated. The problem of bad choices, i.e., George Santos, sends democracies into an ever-deteriorating spiral. Eventually, as many past philosophers, along with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, warned: the highest level of national leadership will be in the hands of misanthropic, egotistical, maniacal miscreants.
Choosing a lesser evil never works, no matter how tempting and convenient it may seem. Always endeavor to choose good over evil.
During truly decadent eras, however, it may be necessary, temporarily, to choose a lesser of two evils at the ballot box. But that is not a moral high-ground. As Margaret Mead and the Christian Bible admonished, we must never label a necessary evil as good. Moreover, since we will have acknowledged to ourselves that we are selecting evil, a crime against our nation, we incur a moral imperative to do whatever is necessary to mitigate the evil outcomes the individual may perpetrate — — our only redemption or spiritual salvation. If we do not, then we become even worse than the lesser evil individuals we chose. It is a dangerous irrationality to expect a spiritual transformation in politicians to put citizens’ needs over their desire to be elected and then reelected.
“Political leaders will not adopt and carry into execution measures not best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power.” (George Washington)
Local leaders must put a plan in place that protects civil and human rights, secures locally-relevant and effective endeavors, emphasizes increasing voting rates, and that places relentless attention on the 2026 midterms. There were 111 million self-disenfranchisers in 2024, and thus the outcome.
There arrives those moments at which soft speaking should be abandoned and a fight to the end undertaken. Anybody who hopes to exercise leadership must be ready to meet that requirement face to face when the moments arise; unless the leaders are ready to fight when necessary, their people will finally ignore them. –Eisenhower and Douglass
