...and Justice for...
The primary elections were last week and I didn't vote. Not registered, don't fucking care. A friend of mine went and voted, then gave me shit about not voting and demanded to know why.
"If you don't participate in the process, what right do you have to complain?!" she asked.
Well, part of the beauty of the process is that I can choose NOT to participate. Which is EXACTLY what gives me the right to complain.
"You can't change a system that is broken from within," I replied, "A corrupt system can only be changed by revolution. True change is ONLY possible through complete and total revolution."
Then she went on to tell me that you CAN use the system to enact change, which may be true, but then she continued with, "by choosing the lesser of two evils."
This only served to demonstrate my point. If my only choices are THIS asshole who I don't agree with, or THIS asshole who I don't agree with, what's the fucking point?! We may CALL it "democracy," but this is NOT democracy. This is a fucking farce. This two-party bullshit where I have to choose between one of two pricks who ultimately only represent their own interests, which, are ultimately the same as the OTHER asshole I DIDN'T vote for? That's bullshit!
Don't get me wrong, there may very well have once been such a thing as "democracy", but this is not it. There may very well have once been such a thing as "freedom," but this is not it.
We exist under a system so bloated with bureaucracy and red tape that the law cannot even be deciphered by the Congressmen and women that wrote the fuckin' things. We exist under a system that cares more about the technicality of the law than the spirit of its intentions. We exist under a system that increasingly seeks to limit our freedoms in order to protect us from those very freedoms they are supposed to provide. We exist under a system that allows ONLY those with money, and those with money alone, to enact true change in this country.
You want evidence? You need convincing? Open your newspaper and read. Go out to the street and look around. It's right in front of you and you can't see it.
Last fiscal year, and every fiscal year, a poll is taken in Congress of how many of them use an outsider to do their taxes. You don't have to look it up, it's ALL of them.
Two reporters for the San Francisco Times, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, were just sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to expose a confidential source on a story regarding the whole "steroids in baseball" thing. No, they may not be "above the law," as the presiding judge described, but they WERE RIGHT. And now it's going to cost them a year and a half of their lives for being right. Is that justice?!
Take a look out your window right now. Forget the broad strokes, look at the details. See that camera up on that pole? That's not just there to aid traffic reports, those cameras are actively controlled and monitored. Those cameras can move, and zoom, and are in full color. Think I'm being paranoid? I'm not. It's true. Next time you happen to encounter a cop, ask.
Look at your computer screen next time you check your email. Think that little lock in the corner means you and whoever you're writing to are the only ones who can read it? Think again.
Ever been to the airport? 'Nough said.
Do you know how to get the law changed? I do. You form a lobby, throw money at the right people, and you get whatever the fuck you want. Can I afford to do that? No. Can you? No! Can both of us together do that? No, we cannot! Who can? Corporations. Conglomerates. Industrial partnerships. In other words, the richest 1%, who work tirelessly lobbying the government in order to lower that percentage as much as possible. And Bush is only helping them.
I bet you think that's called "capitalism," don't you? Wrong. That's called collusion, an illegal and unconstitutional partnership between private and public interest, and THAT, my friends, is called "socialism."
This country was created by the founding fathers NOT as a democracy, but rather as a constitutional republic, and that is NOT just semantics. If you read the original text of the Constitution, you may notice that there is NOTHING in there telling the federal government what it CAN do, but rather just the opposite. The Constitution was written by Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and the rest specifically to LIMIT the powers of the government. It was written NOT to tell you and me what we can or can't do, it was written to tell the government what THEY cannot do.
Ever since Abraham Lincoln told the South that they could not enforce slavery, the federal government, and by extension ALL government has become a laundry list of everything you and I AREN'T allowed to do. THAT is what "government" has come to mean to me, and by the numbers of non-voters in the country, I am clearly not anything remotely resembling alone.
People may accuse me and my ilk of apathy, tell us we have no right to complain if we fail to involve ourselves in the process, but it is that very process which I, which we, are protesting against. By going into that booth and casting your vote, YOU are legitimizing that system. YOU are the ones who are giving these assholes the greenlight to dictate our behavior back to us.
And it really, REALLY does not matter who you vote for. Our two-party system is a fucking joke. You can try to tell me that by voting for a 3rd party I can make my voice heard, that given enough votes they will be granted matching funds, but we ALL know that no matter how much money is behind them, 3rd party candidates have not even a whiff of a prayer of EVER winning any election of any significance. Does the name Ross Perot ring a bell? The notoriously corrupt New York politician Boss Tweed once said, "You may elect whatever candidates you please to office, if you will allow me to select the candidates." In short, by the time names are on the ballot, the fix is already in. By the time you're in that booth, it no longer matters who you vote for. Why shouldn't apathy become a reasonable response?
By voting, you are giving your consent, you are providing them with that power. When you play the game, you are agreeing to the rules, and I REFUSE to play by their rules. I WILL NOT play their game. And by refusing to play, I AM doing my part in the process. I am sending a message that this system does not deserve my endorsement, that this government is illegitimate and will sooner or later crumble under its own weight in red tape. So by being a part of that system, by giving your "okay," by conceding that power to the process, YOU are part of the problem, and it is YOU who have no right to complain. That's right! I fucking said it! What?!
Prominent feminist writer Wendy McElroy wrote in 2004, "Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: 'You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.'"
If that's not enough, if you require something more like numbers and figures, I can go there, too.
Consider this: in the last presidential election, everything came down to a single state: Florida. Officially the margin of victory was 537 votes. If any one of the 6 million or so voters in Florida had stayed home, that margin would have been 536 or 538 votes, still more than enough to give Bush the win. Hell, if 500 voters had said, "Fuck it" and stayed home, the margin would STILL have been more than enough to give him the nod. So even if you voted in the most disputed state in the closest election in the history of this country, your single vote STILL would not have affected the outcome.
Fact is, your single vote will NEVER matter unless the results in your state come within 1 vote of an even tie, and even then, it will not matter unless your state has enough electoral votes to tip the scales for either candidate. I won't bore you with the arithmetic, but, for example in New York state, the likelihood of your single vote being the one that decides an election are roughly 1 in 10 to the 200,708th power. You're statistically more likely to win the Powerball jackpot 7400 consecutive times. Do you have any idea how huge a number 10 to the 200,708th power is? If you were to attempt to write it out on paper, and even assuming you never slept, AND you started at age 5, you wouldn't even get to 1% of it before you dropped dead, even if you lived to be 120 years old. There's not even enough paper in the world to write it down on. Consider it's been estimated that the number of elementary particles in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE is 10 to the 87th power, even at the most extreme estimation. If you don't know what elementary particles are, it means SUBATOMIC PARTICLES. Like electrons and quarks and shit. Think about that. If you don't know what those are, look it up, moron!
I could easily go on like this forever. Long story short, THAT is why I don't bother to vote. It's a waste of my motherfuckin' time. I'll take care of myself and the people I care about, and all the rest of you can go straight to fuckin' Hell. I'll meet you there...
...in the meantime, I'm goin' to buy a lottery ticket...
"If you don't participate in the process, what right do you have to complain?!" she asked.
Well, part of the beauty of the process is that I can choose NOT to participate. Which is EXACTLY what gives me the right to complain.
"You can't change a system that is broken from within," I replied, "A corrupt system can only be changed by revolution. True change is ONLY possible through complete and total revolution."
Then she went on to tell me that you CAN use the system to enact change, which may be true, but then she continued with, "by choosing the lesser of two evils."
This only served to demonstrate my point. If my only choices are THIS asshole who I don't agree with, or THIS asshole who I don't agree with, what's the fucking point?! We may CALL it "democracy," but this is NOT democracy. This is a fucking farce. This two-party bullshit where I have to choose between one of two pricks who ultimately only represent their own interests, which, are ultimately the same as the OTHER asshole I DIDN'T vote for? That's bullshit!
Don't get me wrong, there may very well have once been such a thing as "democracy", but this is not it. There may very well have once been such a thing as "freedom," but this is not it.
We exist under a system so bloated with bureaucracy and red tape that the law cannot even be deciphered by the Congressmen and women that wrote the fuckin' things. We exist under a system that cares more about the technicality of the law than the spirit of its intentions. We exist under a system that increasingly seeks to limit our freedoms in order to protect us from those very freedoms they are supposed to provide. We exist under a system that allows ONLY those with money, and those with money alone, to enact true change in this country.
You want evidence? You need convincing? Open your newspaper and read. Go out to the street and look around. It's right in front of you and you can't see it.
Last fiscal year, and every fiscal year, a poll is taken in Congress of how many of them use an outsider to do their taxes. You don't have to look it up, it's ALL of them.
Two reporters for the San Francisco Times, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, were just sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to expose a confidential source on a story regarding the whole "steroids in baseball" thing. No, they may not be "above the law," as the presiding judge described, but they WERE RIGHT. And now it's going to cost them a year and a half of their lives for being right. Is that justice?!
Take a look out your window right now. Forget the broad strokes, look at the details. See that camera up on that pole? That's not just there to aid traffic reports, those cameras are actively controlled and monitored. Those cameras can move, and zoom, and are in full color. Think I'm being paranoid? I'm not. It's true. Next time you happen to encounter a cop, ask.
Look at your computer screen next time you check your email. Think that little lock in the corner means you and whoever you're writing to are the only ones who can read it? Think again.
Ever been to the airport? 'Nough said.
Do you know how to get the law changed? I do. You form a lobby, throw money at the right people, and you get whatever the fuck you want. Can I afford to do that? No. Can you? No! Can both of us together do that? No, we cannot! Who can? Corporations. Conglomerates. Industrial partnerships. In other words, the richest 1%, who work tirelessly lobbying the government in order to lower that percentage as much as possible. And Bush is only helping them.
I bet you think that's called "capitalism," don't you? Wrong. That's called collusion, an illegal and unconstitutional partnership between private and public interest, and THAT, my friends, is called "socialism."
This country was created by the founding fathers NOT as a democracy, but rather as a constitutional republic, and that is NOT just semantics. If you read the original text of the Constitution, you may notice that there is NOTHING in there telling the federal government what it CAN do, but rather just the opposite. The Constitution was written by Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and the rest specifically to LIMIT the powers of the government. It was written NOT to tell you and me what we can or can't do, it was written to tell the government what THEY cannot do.
Ever since Abraham Lincoln told the South that they could not enforce slavery, the federal government, and by extension ALL government has become a laundry list of everything you and I AREN'T allowed to do. THAT is what "government" has come to mean to me, and by the numbers of non-voters in the country, I am clearly not anything remotely resembling alone.
People may accuse me and my ilk of apathy, tell us we have no right to complain if we fail to involve ourselves in the process, but it is that very process which I, which we, are protesting against. By going into that booth and casting your vote, YOU are legitimizing that system. YOU are the ones who are giving these assholes the greenlight to dictate our behavior back to us.
And it really, REALLY does not matter who you vote for. Our two-party system is a fucking joke. You can try to tell me that by voting for a 3rd party I can make my voice heard, that given enough votes they will be granted matching funds, but we ALL know that no matter how much money is behind them, 3rd party candidates have not even a whiff of a prayer of EVER winning any election of any significance. Does the name Ross Perot ring a bell? The notoriously corrupt New York politician Boss Tweed once said, "You may elect whatever candidates you please to office, if you will allow me to select the candidates." In short, by the time names are on the ballot, the fix is already in. By the time you're in that booth, it no longer matters who you vote for. Why shouldn't apathy become a reasonable response?
By voting, you are giving your consent, you are providing them with that power. When you play the game, you are agreeing to the rules, and I REFUSE to play by their rules. I WILL NOT play their game. And by refusing to play, I AM doing my part in the process. I am sending a message that this system does not deserve my endorsement, that this government is illegitimate and will sooner or later crumble under its own weight in red tape. So by being a part of that system, by giving your "okay," by conceding that power to the process, YOU are part of the problem, and it is YOU who have no right to complain. That's right! I fucking said it! What?!
Prominent feminist writer Wendy McElroy wrote in 2004, "Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: 'You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.'"
If that's not enough, if you require something more like numbers and figures, I can go there, too.
Consider this: in the last presidential election, everything came down to a single state: Florida. Officially the margin of victory was 537 votes. If any one of the 6 million or so voters in Florida had stayed home, that margin would have been 536 or 538 votes, still more than enough to give Bush the win. Hell, if 500 voters had said, "Fuck it" and stayed home, the margin would STILL have been more than enough to give him the nod. So even if you voted in the most disputed state in the closest election in the history of this country, your single vote STILL would not have affected the outcome.
Fact is, your single vote will NEVER matter unless the results in your state come within 1 vote of an even tie, and even then, it will not matter unless your state has enough electoral votes to tip the scales for either candidate. I won't bore you with the arithmetic, but, for example in New York state, the likelihood of your single vote being the one that decides an election are roughly 1 in 10 to the 200,708th power. You're statistically more likely to win the Powerball jackpot 7400 consecutive times. Do you have any idea how huge a number 10 to the 200,708th power is? If you were to attempt to write it out on paper, and even assuming you never slept, AND you started at age 5, you wouldn't even get to 1% of it before you dropped dead, even if you lived to be 120 years old. There's not even enough paper in the world to write it down on. Consider it's been estimated that the number of elementary particles in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE is 10 to the 87th power, even at the most extreme estimation. If you don't know what elementary particles are, it means SUBATOMIC PARTICLES. Like electrons and quarks and shit. Think about that. If you don't know what those are, look it up, moron!
I could easily go on like this forever. Long story short, THAT is why I don't bother to vote. It's a waste of my motherfuckin' time. I'll take care of myself and the people I care about, and all the rest of you can go straight to fuckin' Hell. I'll meet you there...
...in the meantime, I'm goin' to buy a lottery ticket...
posted by D at 22.9.06
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