France, SCOTUS, January 6th, and our duties as citizens

Voting statistics from the second round of the French legislative elections, via Ministry of the Interior

As a culture, we love to talk about "rights." We have a right to privacy. We have a right to free speech. We have a right to the free exercise of religion. We have a right (?) to bear arms. But what we rarely hear about are our duties. What duties do we owe to the state which guarantees these rights? How do we even ensure these rights are guaranteed. To paraphrase Louis Quatorze: L'etat c'est nous.

I use French for a particular reason.

On Sunday, France held its second round of parliamentary elections. The results were of less import—President Emanuel Macron's party lost its majority, and both the left and the fascist National Rally surged—than this salient number: 46.23%. That was the turnout for the election. Less than half of the French electorate bothered to turn out. 

We see this all across the Western world in nations which don't have mandatory voting. Apathy is growing. A feeling of insouciance takes hold. People are consumed with their pleasures.

Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down several 6-3 decisions, all of them bad. Miranda rights have been gutted. Enacting measures to limit concealed carrying of guns will become more difficult. And all this was a direct result of 2016, and the failure to elect Hillary Clinton president, giving control of Court appointments to the most unqualified person to ever sit in the Oval Office. This failure was also a result of apathy, of pettiness, of centering our own needs and desires over the common good.

And because of that failure, we witnessed the ransacking of this nation's Capitol on January 6th, 2021, when that supremely unfit man made one last desperate gambit to remain in office. He had exhausted all his legal avenues. The courts had all shot them down—many of these courts headed by judges he had appointed. Violence was his last recourse. He goaded his mindless, fetid goons. He thought he could engineer a coup d'état through means of street violence. It was never going to work; a mob will not usher one into power without buy-in by power centers. But that's besides the point. It was an attack on this Republic, on our hard-fought-for and hard-won democracy. And how did it come about? Because we too often neglect to attend to our duties as citizens.

Voting isn't supposed to be "fun". If you can get excited over a candidate with a special charisma who also has the good of the country at heart, that's great. But getting starbursts in your crotch shouldn't be the determinative factor in whether or not you vote. In a democracy, the citizen is sovereign. Not the president. Not the senator. The most powerful person in a democracy is the voter. From her all power flows, both for good and ill. If one doesn't vote, one cedes that power to someone else. They cede that power to someone who may not have their best interests at heart. One surrenders agency and the ability to determine one's own life. Voting isn't an inconvenience; in a democracy, it's the one secular sacral act. It's the act which renews the state, which keeps it functioning as a free polity. Without the vote, we may as well return to feudalism. The vote is the guarantor of legitimacy. Without it, and without its judicious exercise, we are nothing but a collection of atomized interests, never combining to perform communal acts of betterment. 

Some will say: Not voting is a way to make your voice heard. No. It's not. It's rubbish. Not voting is an indication that you care nothing for your neighbors. Not voting shows you care nothing for your fellow citizens. You may tell a pollster you support this or that position. But if you don't vote, it's all a masturbatory exercise. 

I have voted in every election—local, state, and federal—since I turned 18. Because it's my right. Because it's my privilege. And because it's my duty. Rights without concomitant responsibilities are just exercises in narcissism. Who will defend your rights if you don't even bother to vote? What rights will you even have left? Rights don't exist in a vacuum; they have to be defended and tended constantly. 

If I'm lecturing, that's because I am. We will not survive if we don't recognize that no right is eternal unless it's fought for and maintained. And the basic way you do this is to vote. Not for the person who makes you tingly, but for the person who will uphold your rights. This isn't American Idol. This is real life. And we're now finding out how real life can get.