One Of Our Biggest Problems: The Deflation Of Power

“My services are entirely inconsequential to them.” – Raiders of the Lost Ark

I like my steak rare.  Like panda or bigfoot.

I’m writing this ahead of time, so as I type, I have had little information about what’s going on in the race, other than it tied in Dixville Notch and that Kamala narrowly carried Guam, which is okay, I guess.  Karate Kid XVIII was set in Guam, right?  Or was it on an orbital space platform?  I forget.

There has already been the smell of fraud coming from the 2024 presidential election – we got that in the last few weeks and discussed it on the most recent (pre-election) podcast and on this week’s Civil War 2.0 Weather Report.  The simple answer is that having same-day, in-person paper voting of properly identified voters with public counts is the only way to avoid fraud.  Oh, and a purple finger dye would be a bonus.

Never order hay from Amazon®.  After a couple of days they’ll as for feed back.

The real problem, though isn’t fraud – the real problem is that elections in a free country shouldn’t be this consequential.  But yet, they are.  And I’ve discovered my underline, italics, and bold keys.  I’m dangerous now that I know a bit more about typography – it’s been a character building exercise.

What caused the election to be so consequential?  Deflation, and Inflation.

Let’s start with Deflation.

Back when the United States was just warming up, the powers of the federal government were very limited.  In fact, almost every law that existed was a law that existed at the state (or commonwealth, if you can’t spell ‘state’), county, or city level.  There was no federal law against murder.

In fact, why would there need to be a federal law against murder?  States could take care of that with their existing laws quite nicely, thank you.  And we also had lynching, which saved about three days off of the whole “catch-trial-hang” normal course of justice and the cost of a trial.  Federal government?  Why would they need to get involved at all?  We can find our own trees.

And presidents.  Being president meant that you were elected to administer the (weak) government of only 3.9 million people, which is approximately the number of people who share a single bathroom in Mumbai.  Now there are at least 334 million people living in the United States, increasing the power of the presidency by a factor of 85.

I couldn’t resist.  (LINK to Aesop)

But there’s more!  Back in 1800, the president would likely have been bored a great deal of the time, since there wasn’t so much to do.  There was no real standing army, so there was no military-industrial complex to feed.  There was no federal welfare.  There was no Department of Education.  In fact, there were only three departments:  State, Treasury, and War.  There was also an Attorney General.

And Washington, elected in April, didn’t bother to nominate people for those positions until September.  Summer break, probably.  Or maybe he was still hung over.  Regardless, the position of the president was so unimportant that Washington didn’t do anything for months, and yet the country kept going.

I’d estimate that the power of the president is 10,000 times, minimum, what it was back in 1800 between the number of citizens and the increase in power from the sheer size and complexity of the federal government.  Now, that’s what I call deflation!  Imagine going to sleep and finding your dollar was worth 10,000 times what it was the night before.

This was funny to either fans of 19^th Century German opera or fans of 1990s Saturday morning cartoons.  And that’s about it.

And congressmen?  When we started, there was on representative for every 37,000 people.  Now, each congressman represents a staggering 750,000 people.  That’s a power inflation of over 20.  But it’s also a critical distinction.  Here in Modern Mayberry, I can pick up the phone and call the most politically powerful elected official (that represents about 37,000 folks) and expect a personal call back.  To be fair, he doesn’t know everybody, but he knows (generally) quite a few folks and I have sufficient stature to have made it to that “call this guy back” list.  I mean, who doesn’t want to hear from the village idiot?  It’s a very nice village.

Back then, congressmen were at least theoretically accessible.  Now?  The guy who’s gonna win the race probably knows my name, but there’s no way he could put my face together with it.  A congressman is 20 times more powerful (just on numbers) than he was back in 1800.

If that were it, it would be manageable.  But it’s not it.

In 1800, or even 1900, your single point of contact with the federal government would have been getting your mail.

During my last interview, the hiring manager asked me if I could perform under pressure.  I said, “No, but I know Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Now?  The federal government is now the most over-reaching and powerful governmental entity in your life (if you’re American).  From the moment you go to bed to the moment you go to sleep it covers every facet of your life.  You get up, use FDA approved toothpaste to brush.  Get in a shower of a size and volume determined by the EPA, with water quality defined by the EPA, after flushing a toilet whose volume is governed by the EPA.  That’s the first five minutes.  It doesn’t get better, but I’ll leave the exercise of getting into a car and the rest of the day to the reader.

Just on the population, those positions have become more powerful.  But add in the ever-increasing creeping of the federal government into every part of your life?  Every decision?  Every surface?  The power of an individual member of congress has easily increased by a thousand-fold.  This is deflation.

The federal government used to be the tip of the power pyramid, far away and not particularly important.  Now that geometry is upside down, with the tip being the base.  Local decisions are increasingly trivial at the city and county level, more consequential at the state level, but many of these are 100% constrained by federal mandates and power.

The elected official you can most easily reach has the smallest impact on your life.  You can’t hope to get the attention of a federal official or congressman because you’re too small.  You don’t matter.

Your power has inflated away,

• first based on the increase in population diluting the voice of individuals where the number of elected officials remains the same,
• then by making the power remote from you housed in unaccountable bureaucracies, and
• thirdly, the inherent power of your community has been erased through the forced diversity by purposely injecting foreign communities to break up the traditions and community norms so that your power is even more fully fractured. Somalians don’t make Minnesota better in any way.  They are culturally alien and belong in (bear with me) Somalia.

Why?

I went to the Air and Space Museum.  Disappointed, since it was just an empty building.

A pyramid that stands on its point is inherently unstable.  They know that.  It’s also inherently unfree.  You know that.  The solution is simple, but will take time and effort:

Devolve power away from Washington.  Move power to the states.  This is inevitable, and will happen because of that instability, because the undeniable weakness of the federal government is showing.  A single man like Donald Trump was able to thwart the lawfare, the biased media, the entire Deep State, and even his own party’s hierarchy.

All it takes is one man, and where one will stand up, others will follow.

Make America Great Again?

Yes.

The first step is, though, is to Make the Presidential Election Inconsequential Again.

And, maybe, ship Kamala to Guam if they like her that much.