“Representation” … and “Consent”

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Democracy is an incredibly successful long con. It works because of the illusion of consent. People actually believe they are “represented.”

And so, they accept impositions that would otherwise be intolerable, if imposed on them by a king or a fuhrer or generalissimo.

But when the “people” have decided… .

Except of course, they’ve done no such thing. It is all an illusion, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that deftly hides the reality that it is not the “people” who decide anything but rather a small handful of individuals who wield vast – almost unlimited – power by claiming to act on their behalf.

Which is a fine-sounding literary device but as a political actuality it is an atrocity.

Have you ever consented to anything the government does to you? Been offered the free choice to accept – or decline? And not subject to violent repercussions in the event you do decide to decline? What sort of contract is it that you’re never actually been presented with but which you’re presumed to have signed – and which you are bound by whether you’ve signed – or not?

It is very odd.

The courts have ruled that by dint of having applied for permission to travel – that is, having applied for a driver’s license – you gave given your implied consent to, well, pretty much anything the state decides to do to you. Even when in flagrant abuse of your alleged rights, as enumerated in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Yet few, if any of us, have actually consented to this abrogation of our rights.

We are simply told that we have, since we submitted (under duress) to the necessity of obtaining a driver’s license, so as to be able to travel semi-freely, under certain terms and conditions.

Like most political language, “consent of the governed” means (in reality) the opposite of its superficial (and generally accepted) meaning. Of a piece with legislation touting “freedom” and “patriotism.” Most of us understand very well what’s coming in that case.

We need to learn the same about “consent of the governed.”

That our consent is irrelevant.

We’ll do as we’re told – or else.

Essential to the lie of “consent” is the fraud of “representation.” As in “no taxation without representation” (implying that it’s legitimate to take your money since you’ve said it’s ok to do that… except of course you probably never said any such thing). The concept – always left fuzzy, never closely examined – is that we each give proxy power to another person (the “representative”) who then “represents” our interests.

It’s a preposterous – and pernicious – concept.

No one has your proxy power except when explicitly given.

Have you given it?

The claim is that by voting, you’ve done exactly that. Which is nonsense, since you have no choice whatsoever to decline to give your proxy. You are presented with a choice of proxies – in the same way that a condemned man in some states is presented with the choice of lethal injection or the electric chair.

Your feeble right to vote for the candidates of other people’s choosing is the mechanism by which all your sovereign rights as an individual are vitiated.

“Representation” makes you believe it’s all ok. Makes you accept the unacceptable.

Your drop of piss vote in the bucket mingles with oceans of other people’s piss-votes. A “representative” is infused with the combined “voices” of all those people and, via some process beyond the ken of mortal man, transmutes their “will” into concrete action. Which action is infused with moral authority because it echoes the vox populi.

You are “represented.”

Nonsense.

The idea that a congressman transmutes the will of thousands of discrete individuals is actually worse than nonsense.

It is imbecility.

Well, those who buy into it are imbeciles, at any rate.

Most people are unaware of the fact that the German Nazis considered themselves the ultimate democrats (little “d”). That Hitler was not a self-aggrandizing tyrant but merely a sort of conduit for the will of the German national community, the volksgemeinschaft. This is not opinion. It is what the Nazis themselves formally touted. “Hitler,” roared Rudolf Hess at one of the infamous Nuremburg partei rallies – “is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler.”

One and the same.

Noteworthy also is the verbiage of the Soviet communists, who spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It wasn’t Lenin and Stalin’s dictatorship. Oh no! They were merely doing what the proletariat – the people – desired. Hence also the German Democratic Republic (the former East Germany) and the People’s Republic of China.

These are examples of democracy in its extreme, distilled form.

The “proof” of American democracy continues to wax.

One hundred years ago, we were at what you might call the hard cider, or the beer and wine stage. We are now at the Jack Daniels stage.

How much longer before we are at the methanol stage?

It depends on how much longer the long con that we are “represented” – and have given our “consent” – holds up.