As we sat down at a table at a Mexican restaurant, my friends gave some advice.
Don’t worry. You won’t even have to look at the menu. They only serve nachos, enchiladas, and fajitas. Simple enough.
Simple enough. But also, kind of complicated.
The nachos, you see, were smothered with cheese – an ingredient I could not digest. The enchiladas were smothered in sauce, making a mess inevitable. (Oh, they also had cheese, for good measure.) And the fajitas required extra effort to assemble.
Where were the steak tacos I was craving? Or, to that end, the tamales or flautas?
Not at this restaurant. And so, my options were crude.
Order the fajita platter I didn’t want. Or go hungry – and explain to my friends why.
In essence, there was only one choice. So, when the waiter turned to me, I blurted out Beef fajitas, please, without a hint of hesitation.
My friends were right. I didn’t even have to look at the menu.
There are many reasons why this restaurant kept its menu so tidy.
Convenience. Simplicity. Tradition.
But also cost.
Mexican food, you see, often draws upon common ingredients. Corn tortillas. Flour tortillas. Salsa. Grilled steak. Grilled chicken. Peppers. Onions. Spiced rice. Refried beans. Cheese.
It’s the way that these items are assembled that comprises a menu. It’s what makes tacos different from enchiladas or burritos or chimichangas.
This interoperability makes ingredient costs a minor concern. Everything except the meat is generally affordable – no small detail in an industry with tight margins.
But preparation costs? That’s a different matter entirely.
It takes more work to, say, season grill a carne asada to perfection than it does to roll some shredded chicken in tortillas and smother the whole plate in sauce. It takes more work to assemble grilled skirt steak into tacos than it does to bring it to the table wholesale as fajitas.
This restaurant we were visiting was known for running a streamlined kitchen. Minimizing preparation costs were the ethos of its menu.
It’s a menu the restaurant has long mastered, to critical acclaim. But for someone like me, it took the words free choice off the table.
Literally.
Being saddled with one undesirable option at a restaurant might seem like a first world problem. And indeed, it is.
But this frustrating moment represents the tip of an iceberg. An iceberg sabotaging the fundamentals of our society.
We claim to live a land with liberty and justice for all. And for the most part, we do. We are free to vote, work, and entertain ourselves as we see fit.
But the options we have when exercising that free choice? Those have a cost.
Consider governance. As a representative democracy, we elect leaders to run our country’s affairs on our behalf. Those elections are open to nearly every American adult, free of charge. And myriad efforts to restrict these rights have been quashed over time.
But the choices on our ballots? Those are not nearly as open as our right to choose from them.
Not just anyone can make a serious run for office. To be viable, you need sterling credentials, a semblance of name recognition, and money. A lot of money.
You don’t rise from nothing to become President in America. You just don’t.
The earliest occupants of the office – our Founding Fathers – were wealthy plantation owners. Despite humble origins, Abraham Lincoln gained acclaim as a lawyer before pursuing the White House.
Even modern-day outsider candidates — Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan — had a leg up over everyday Americans. Obama earned a law degree from Harvard University, while Reagan earned acclaim as an actor. Each amassed a small fortune before even turning to politics, let alone pursuing the highest office in the land.
Make no mistake. Politics is awash in money. Money provided by special interest groups, by mega-donors, and by the politicians themselves. There’s a reason why the size of a candidate’s war chest matters as much as their poll numbers.
This creates a contradiction.
When we step into that voting booth, we exercise free choice. Free choice among options who paid to play.
The people whose names are on that ballot don’t seem much like us or relate to our lived experience. If we were to draft a list of who would best represent us, they likely wouldn’t make our Top 10.
And yet, here we are, left to choose between them. To decide whether Option 11 or Option 14 should be our Number 1.
We might want tacos, but we’re offered enchiladas or fajitas.
Free choice carries quite the cost. Make no mistake about that.
That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change. That’s just the way it is. Yeah, but don’t you believe them.
Bruce Hornsby and the Range rose to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the strength of those lyrics nearly four decades ago. Hornsby and his band found acclaim. And yes, they earned quite a bit of money in the process.
The central premise of those lyrics remains a work in progress. We are still working at breaking barriers, eliminating preconceptions, and defining what’s possible.
I believe in that work, and the mission underpinning it. But I also believe it’s critical for all of us to be clear-eyed about something fundamental.
We may have been bestowed the right of free choice. But the power contained within that right is minimal.
Sure, we can help determine who sits in the Oval Office. Sure, we can help determine which automaker sells the most vehicles.
But there are other forces — capitalist forces — that put those options on the table for us in the first place. And it’s within those forces where the true power lies.
It’s my sincere hope that someday, that process will be more accessible. That we’ll be able to determine what makes the menu, not just what we want to order from it.
But that’s a long way off.
In the meanwhile, maximizing the power of our free choice means getting comfortable with three words:
Follow the money.
I am. Are you?