If the public school systems had done their jobs, none of you would have clicked on that title because you’d already know the answer. Well, sit down kiddies and tighten those seat belts. Democratic Republicanism and how to actually use it coming warp speed at you right now!
First off, the obvious. New York City is undeniably a captured polity. Polity is just fancy for the political entity and those affected – you know, pretty much everyone under the authority of the NYC government. New York belongs to the Democrat Party, period. That’s where the trouble starts.
Don’t get the wrong idea – any area that is incapable of voting for a different party is just as captive and every bit as vulnerable. Right now, we’re seeing the most extreme effects on the left, with the Democrats but solid colors are always at risk.
For what, you ask? Good question! Remember when you swore to your mom you’d feed and bathe that puppy every day, promise? Then a year later you never take care of the dog because your mom will do it. You took your Mom for granted. Hey, you got the dog you loved without the tedious picking up of the poop – win-win, right?
That’s how an entrenched party sees those it governs, only the party doesn’t love you and won’t even say thank you. For that matter, the entrenched party also treats the dog – those stuck with the party because they aren’t numerous enough to vote it out – pretty crappy. They don’t even play with the poor thing.
FYI: you’re the poor thing.
As long as the governing party knows it is secure, it can pursue its own ideological interests or its own financial interests with impunity. Who cares what the peons want? Throw ’em a few scraps, pretend to care about them and ignore them.
Political parties aren’t football teams. There are real world consequences for almost every action of government. You’ll get over losing a championship within a few days; rights, freedoms, jobs, not so much.
Democrats know full well that their policies have no effect on New York voters. Blue, no matter who – or what they do.
Voters tend to be lazy. It’s a side effect of being human. We don’t want to do the hard part and find out who the candidates are and what they want to do. We don’t bother. We let the party base do that stuff during the primaries. Then we grumble about never having a choice and vote for our favorite color. Done for another two years!
This is exactly what New Yorkers have done and are doing. They are not unique; we all do it. But they have overdone it to the point that things have changed. It’s not merely that New Yorkers chose to let others do the hard part. It’s that New Yorkers no longer have a real choice.
That is a captured polity. Congrats, New York, you played yourselves.
Democrats as a party chose who will be elected. The primaries are a formality. Because voters will overwhelmingly vote like lemmings, the Democrats have zero accountability. Yell and scream on social media all you like, your ‘representatives’ and ‘elected officials’ don’t care. You’ll pull that little blue lever in large enough numbers that they don’t need to care.
New York is Democrat property, courtesy of the New York Voters.
FYI: lemmings don’t really all run off cliffs. As long as New Yorkers vote blue no matter what, the lemmings are smarter than you guys are.
There’s no cavalry riding to the rescue, either. You’re on your own, New York.
Okay, so that’s the bad news. Wanna know how to get yourselves out of this mess?
Well, you’re still here so I’ll take that as a yes.
Use the ballot boxes as they are intended – actually select for yourselves the specific person you will vote for. Do that for a decade and everything will clear up just fine.
You want a faster solution? Sure, there is one, but you won’t like it.
No, guys, I mean it. You will really HATE the fast solution. Just stop being lazy and vote consistently and it’ll be fine, I promise. Sure, it takes a decade or more but it’ll do the job and you won’t hate it.
You really want to know how to do this fast? Okay, sure, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The fast track: Vote straight Republican for the next two election cycles.
SEE?! I told you you’d hate it!
Nah, you don’t need to become Republicans – you just need to break the Democrat stranglehold on your city. Two cycles – that’s just two years – is all it should take.
Why would that work? Simple, it gets the Democrats completely out of power. It’s impossible for the Democrats to continue to take New Yorkers for granted if they can’t even get elected dog catcher in those two cycles. If they want to resume leadership, they are going to have to bring some serious effort to the table.
Whether New York takes them back is up to y’all. Four years is plenty of time for Republicans to win you over legitimately or shoot themselves in the foot. I ain’t making promises about how good your governance is going to be when your electorate is so out of practice, but it will beat the heck out of what you have now.
The thing is, New York, the choice is yours. Your batting average isn’t exactly great. Sadly, the reality is New York will probably have to get a lot worse before it even tries to free itself. That’s why it can’t save itself. New York has the keys to the jail but it won’t use them.
But nothing is stopping New York from proving me wrong. Give it a shot – two election cycles isn’t enough for the Republicans to go too crazy. All you have to lose is your political captivity.
Oh yeah, I should warn you, if you don’t want to end up right back where you started from, you have to change, too. No more voting for a color. Vote for the person and what they want to do with the office. If you want a well governed city, you, the people of New York, have to take responsibility for your government.
And yes, governments are a LOT like puppies, just not as smart. They need to be fed, watered, walked, bathed and trained. Even with the best trained governments, you’ll still have to pick up their poop sometimes.
All those idealistic words about freedom and liberty, justice and mercy, they MATTER. But they only matter as much as each generation is willing to make them matter. Freedom ain’t free. Its price is high in terms of blood and treasure, ask any veteran, but its price isn’t just paid by those who serve.
It’s paid by those who care enough to vote for the best candidate available, not just the right color beside a stranger’s name on a ballot. Those civic duty things you vaguely remember being mentioned in Civics class are the price every American pays to secure their freedom and liberty and to insure justice and mercy for all.
When you don’t pay that price long enough, you end up like New York with rampant crime, declining standards of living, tanking wages, and more homeless than you can hope to house. None of those things had to happen. None of those problems are insolvable. They only get so bad because your elected government ignores them or even encourages them for misguided reasons.
And you as the People of New York let your government get away with it.
You are the mom. You can pretend your kid isn’t a brat or you can do something about it. Truth is, as bad as things seem, you are not powerless, New Yorkers. You can remain captive or you can be free.
The choice is, as always, yours.
