Civic Irresponsibility

May 24, 2023

the politics of convenience

I recently tweeted something - as always, this was a bad move. My Twitter account is run mainly for myself to share thoughts on topics, and the dopamine rush of likes thankfully doesn’t do it for me - otherwise, I would have a much more powerful addiction to the platform than I already do (though I’ve reduced this to an hour a day, thankfully).

My recent mistake was poking fun at the replies to a tweet reading “I am once again begging you to stop trying to get out of jury duty” - the replies lambasting this person for being ableist, inconsiderate, etc. Now, I may have the reading skills of a lowly engineer, but nowhere in that sentence does the author say anything to discriminate against poor people, disabled people, et cetera. Over and over, the replies read out various reasons that each cannot attend jury duty - the more legitimate ones, such as the birth of a kid, childcare, cancer, caring for a sick adult, poverty, and the ones that are less so, such as claiming ADHD inherently prevents people from serving on juries, that chairs hurt, COVID, etc. This latter group is missing the point of a jury and likely hamstringing the effectiveness of their ideologies as a result.

Obviously, juries should be more accessible! Being on a jury should pay better; being on one should prevent employees from being fired due to serving; there should be free childcare and exceptions for elder care and illness. Last time I checked, a jury should represent the citizens; people who are struggling are still citizens. Their opinions matter.

This principle - that all are responsible for the judgment of their fellow citizens - should be taken seriously, and this is where I take issue with the latter group. This assortment, going off of a scan of the most popular comments, is composed of people on the left-to-liberal end of the political spectrum, usually younger, and very socially liberal. They (and I apologize for putting words in their mouths) probably disagree with the juries’ decisions in many high profile cases; those which elect to disproportionately impose the death penalty on young black men, the Kyle Rittenhouse case, George Zimmerman, and so on. If they want the direction of the United States to change in the direction they wish, they should serve on a jury! But they likely won’t.

What comes between ideology and praxis better than inertia? These people, by and large, have determined that they are more comfortable sitting on the sidelines of the function of their nation than grabbing hold of the process that they have oh-so-many opinions about. Their comfort comes first; second their beliefs; third justice for other citizens that they bloviate on Twitter about. So many of these espoused liberals, leftists, communists, and anarchists wither under the slightest hint of inconvenience, in no small part due to the lack of legitimate problems that they have dealt with before that would otherwise temper their resolve. Because, first and foremost, these people are comfortable, and that comfort is the largest issue. If Democrats were against weed and social media, they’d move on over to the Right. Their belief that they ought to help the downtrodden is flimsy at best.

And yes, the revealed preference for most people is the same - most people do not want to sit around for jury duty. However, I would like to remind these leftists by convenience the ramifications of these decisions.

If the younger demographics drop jury duty, the pool remaining will inherently be older, and those in the older pool will tend to be more right-wing, less socially liberal, whiter, and less queer than the average American. In other words, the exact kind of jury that these limousine liberals fear and protest! Sorry, but I suppose that since older people care more, the younger people have to sit by the side as juries rule against them. When the first woman in Texas is convicted of murder for getting an abortion under the new post-Roe laws, we’ll see an outcry from these people. Will they be on the jury, deadlocking it, grinding it to a halt? Will they be telling other jurors about jury nullification? If not, where will they be? Probably on Twitter, or maybe Instagram, angry about something they could’ve stopped. If only it were more convenient.