#46<\/a>), where James Madison expressly writes that With the affairs of these [States], the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant.<\/i> And also: The members of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments of thirteen and more States, the justices of peace, officers of militia, ministerial officers of justice, with all the county, corporation, and town officers, for three millions and more of people, intermixed, and having particular acquaintance with every class and circle of people, must exceed, beyond all proportion, both in number and influence, those of every description who will be employed in the administration of the federal system.<\/i> I don\u2019t blame him for writing that, and in 1788 he certainly had no reason to predict how broadcast media would shake down two hundred and thirty-odd years down the proverbial, but it turns out that no, people are more familiarly and minutely conversant with affairs of far-off Washington than with their State and local government. I would find it easier to name the nine Supreme Court Justices than the nine members of my town council, and I think I could name, off the top of my head, no more than two of my six elected statewide officials. I\u2019m not even certain I know the names of my current representatives in both branches of the State Legislature\u2014there was a change recently and I think I remember correctly that they guy with the silly name won, it\u2019s possible that I only remember the silly name and not the outcome of the election. The town I live in has around sixty-five thousand residents, which I would describe as medium-sized, and I don\u2019t know the names of any of the people who work at the Town Hall and only a very small number of the people employed by the town in any capacity.\r\nThe system works much better if people really are more interested in their local and state governments, of course. And I have no sense if the change is really that there has been a substantial decline<\/i> in locally-interested citizens, or it\u2019s that the far more substantial increase<\/i> in nationally-informed citizens, or for that matter in people who are considered citizens (or for that matter in people who are considered people), but it certainly seems as if the typical voter of the last couple of generations is much more concerned with and aware of national stuff than local stuff. In my town, something like one-third of eligible voters actually vote in odd-numbered years\u2014or, to put it another way, about a quarter of the town doesn\u2019t vote at all, about a third votes every time they can, and the largest group vote only when there\u2019s a federal or statewide office on the ballot.\r\n
I read something recently which claimed that the late 19th Century was a period of extremely heightened political participation in the US, with not only extraordinarily high voter turnout but high participation in rallies, debates and Party conventions, and all the various messy aspects of politics in public life. It was also a time of unusually high levels of misinformation, partisan \u2018fake news\u2019 and political street violence, the writer claimed. The point being that high turnout, or even high levels of participation, are not necessarily a sign of a healthy democracy. Or, presumably, that the thing that sparks higher levels of participation may not be greater education or patriotism, either. I don\u2019t know. It seems to me that there is so much<\/i> wrong with our democracy at present that it\u2019s difficult to really look at any part of it. On the other hand, there was always so much wrong with it\u2026 Like all other times, things are simultaneously getting much better and much worse.\r\n
Still, participatory self-government has to be at least partly local, if it is going to serve the purpose of developing our capacity for governing ourselves. And the more difficult it is to participate, the worse it will be. At the moment, it\u2019s much harder for me to learn about my town than about Washington, DC\u2014even if I am willing to go and vote in odd-numbered years.\r\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger has no ideas for what might change the issue at its root, or if that change would make things better or worse.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20652,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20650\/revisions\/20652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}