Use of Force

The Duke of Medinaceli, who succeeded Don Juan as the principal adviser of Charles II, was an indolent, affable minister, popular with his peers because he lacked the firmness to resist their appeals for subsidies. – R. M. Smith, Spain

In a politics presumed to be available to everyone, ideas and ideals play a great part.  [But] there is a direct connection between their power and another kind of power, the old, unabashed, cynical power of force. – Lionel Trilling, “Introduction” to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

David Koch, clubbing in the '80s.

As you can see, I have been reading
about Spain, under the hapless Habsburgs and the fascist Franco.  As always, I read with half an eye on the words on the page and half on my roiling gut.  It doesn’t matter whose or how far away in time or space, politics always gets my gut roiling.  What in my relatively happy and uneventful childhood stirred up so much hate for power? Was it that even in my small town, it was never used except either arbitrarily or to benefit the one that had it, and that it therefore seemed inevitably to be corrupting?  Power isn’t like a hammer; it isn’t a neutral tool, one you can unhand after you’ve pounded in a few nails, put in your toolbox, and walk away from.  It sticks like the tar sticks to your hands after you’ve been picking tobacco.

Money is power.  It was in 17th century Spain; it is (even more so) in 21st America.  I propose:

1. That the use of capital to appropriate things that rightly belong to someone else is plunder;
2. That it is no matter that buying elections is now legal - it is still an abhorrent use of force to take for “special interests” what belongs to “the people.”
3. That doing so is not as gentle as the term “buying” an election suggests; it is an arbitrary use of force, a brutal usurpation of others’ rights; plunder! 

All this is simple and straightforward.  It requires no lengthy explanation; there is no need for nuance.  “Free and fair elections”?  If elections but can be coerced, they aren’t free and cannot be fair.