Election eve -- it's about time to bring
this up.
This phrase "battered
voter syndrome" started popping up in various venues around the time of the
2004 election, when things were still
up in the air. It's
relevance, sadly, has not dimmed a
notch, and if anything has gotten several shades brighter and hotter. The
parallel which it draws from is obvious --
battered wife syndrome (or battered spouse syndrome if you want to be sure to include the small proportion of males who are truly physically battered in a
relationship), the
condition where the physically and, generally, psychologically weaker partner in a relationship sustains physical
torment at the hands of the other, and yet refuses to open their eyes to that bleak reality.
It is the
victim, in this instance, who chooses to "
blame the victim," who chooses to hew to the objectively false belief that
this time will be different, that the
failure to
govern amongst the
politicians whose
ideology appears to
match their own is
not a
symptom of dishonest political hacks inhabiting the broken system which so appeals to those types, but is the fault of the
other political party or of the ideologically impure (read: willing to
compromise and
innovate cooperatively) within their own party, which would be enabled to enact triumphant policies
if only, if only the voters could straighten out their act and elect the ideologically pure for some sustained period and not be fooled by "
moderates."
Here's a
snippet of information for your
consideration, taken from an actual
Domestic Violence website:
Domestic violence and abuse are used for one purpose and one purpose only: to gain and maintain total control over you. An abuser doesn't play fair. Abusers use fear, guilt, shame, and intimidation to wear you down and keep you under their thumb. Your abuser may also threaten you, hurt you, or hurt those around you.
Sound
familiar? The
problem lies, naturally, in the "two party"
monopoly which has grown into the most vicious and self-aggrandizing of two-headed
monsters. Like rival sports teams or religions or Coke and Pepsi, the two main parties compel their faithful to form irrational
emotional
attachments to the party, to foolishly believe the success of the organization in obtaining positions of political power will align with and serve the voters' own interests. But the constant
grappling for party
power is just that, a
contest for power for the sake of power itself, one which provides less of a boon to the lives of the
loyal than does the
supremacy of one team over another in a sporting
championship.
Like the apologies of a battering husband when he fears he's finally just gone too far, election cycles are all about short-term
promises for immediate
results -- mere
bandages over the festering
wounds of long term
injury -- combined with threats over how much
worse it will be if "the other side" gains or holds power (there being, in the formulation of the abuser, only one "other side"). And, given enough time, the battered voter will even forget the past
beatings inflicted by the abuser, and will remember only the kind words and flowery promises of the apologetic periods.
This is why, whenever an alternative movement for some kind, any kind, of common-sense ideological consistency gets rolling, it is coopted and neutered by the party most closely aligned with it, within a cycle or two. This is why our system is set up to push candidates to 'run toward the edge' to get a nomination, to 'run toward the middle' to win a general election, and once elected to do no more than pay lip service to the needs or concerns of constituents, or electors, of the faithful voter. The victors instead turn their true energies toward their singular goal: aggrandizing further power to their own political party, whichever it may be, while making it seem that theirs represents one of only two options to exist.
----
Stepping out of generality for a moment, in tomorrow's culmination of this particular election cycle, the 2010 midterms, there is some
glimmer of an
opportunity. There are, admittedly deeply flawed
candidates like
Lisa Murkowski in
Alaska,
Charlie Crist in
Florida, and
Lincoln Chafee in
Rhode Island who, whatever their shortcomings, have managed to at least temporarily divorce themselves from the party machinery (and, on an odd note, in all three cases from the
Republican Party -- Chafee seeming to be the most honourable of the lot, and not coincidentally the most likely victor). This may not stick -- taking the example of
Joe Lieberman's 2006 "
independent" bid which has since yielded a steady
Democratic vote in the
Senate. But the fact that any of them is enjoying even the potential to prevail over candidates from the major parties is a
ray of
hope to the possibility that what needs to happen to save this country from further abuse: the victimised voter needs to take a cold, hard look at their abuser, the two-headed
snake of our current Republican-Democrat quasi-divide, and tell it: "I'm leaving you."