whoopdie fuckin do: election rant

i voted today. after my own particular idiom, i voted as a true american. i went in, refused to use the electronic republican voting machine ("are you intimidated by technology?" the snot nosed motherfucker asked me), and voted the party line on all candidates with a listed party, voted for smaller gov't everywhere else, and voted to stick it to my hated minority group.

i came away even more convinced than ever that democracy, particularly the one we've got here, is a complete farce. the only thing i knew about the people i voted for was their names and parties, and i'd never heard of any of them, except for our current governator, and him only because he's the star of the greatest movie ever made in the history of the universe. the rest? who? the initiatives or propositions or whatever the hell they were that i voted on, all i knew of them was what i could squeeze out of the 5 sentences on the ballot.

please tell me that what i did was irresponsible. please tell me that what i did was different from what > 50% of all voters do. please tell me that my uninformed vote is any less legitimate than your well-researched thoroughly-contemplated stringently-considered vote.

you'd be wrong, especially if my vote gets counted and yours doesn't. what good is all your research now?

i think in an ideal society, voters would take the time to educate themselves on "the issues". but this isn't an ideal society, and the mass of voters either don't bother to educate themselves or draw the wrong conclusions from their education. do i really need to cite evidence for this?

so, riddle me this, batman: what's the point of voting if well-informed votes get drowned in a smelly sea of uninformed, wrong-conclusion votes? there isn't a point. but i'll do it anyhow.

i don't watch tv. i don't read sample ballots. really, i don't have a lot of hope for "the system", and here's why:

each election season, more people are mobilized to vote to keep gay people from marrying than are mobilized to do any gorram thing about ending war, hunger, cancer, or corporate tax fraud.

get it? with all the bloody chunder going on in the world, including pederast republican congressmen and crank-addicted homosexual evangelical ministers (see? i do keep up on the news), here in CA, we're voting on whether we should use car tax money to pay for road repairs. what? the ship is sinking and we're worried about how the useless politicians we elect will spend their ill-gotten tax dollars?

why not just elect responsible people in the first place?

because we as a species are incapable of doing such a thing.

one of my coworkers said that on issues on which he is not well informed, he withholds his vote. i used to subscribe to this philosophy as well. now, i see that it is idiocy, although no greater idiocy than not withholding a vote. for every issue on which i, the responsible voter, admit that i am unqualified to vote, 100 decidedly unqualified people will "make their voice heard." every time i say "i didn't read all of the studies, i haven't formed a polished opinion, i won't vote on that", twenty high school dropouts have had their positions handed to them by a tv commercial or a robocall or a talk radio host and "rock the vote" on a highly complex, intricately worded piece of incomprehensible legislation.

here's something: i didn't bother to put much effort into my civic duty this time around because that's what our civic duty has become. we as a nation have put so much effort on "get out the vote" that we've forgotten that a successful democracy requires 1) honest politicians and 2) intelligent voters. we tell every doofus with a driver's license that they should vote and then we pummel everyone in the state with hollywoodized ad campaigns to confuse every little issue to the point where nothing makes sense any more.

at the end of it all, a democracy still depends on honest politicians and intelligent voters.

which of those things have we got?

really? then why are we voting on a law to tax corporations to fund political campaigns?

don't we have more important problems to tackle? still no cure for cancer!

speaking of cancer, i decided today to participate in the tyranny of the majority. i picked a group that i generally dislike and voted for legislation that would harm them. ain't democracy grand? i didn't do anything "wrong" or out of the ordinary -- that's what the system's for. don't like it? i've "earned" my "right to complain". all i had to do was check some little boxes. viva freedom!

i could go on and on with emotional arguments about the futility of voting when all we can vote for is laws or politicians, two groups of things which have never brought net benefit to the planet. but whining about the pointlessness of voting is even more silly than actually voting, much less thinking that voting matters.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

i like how i put that above right there, ya know? i'll say it again: as long as what we're voting for is laws and politicians, we'll never get anywhere. i was talking with a coworker this morning about some passage of Mathew, I don't recall the exact one. He quoted it and applied it aptly to the current world situation, particularly the behavior of the most recently outed gay tweaker john minister, and i pointed out that not only were the writers of the NT astute students of human behavior, human behavior hasn't changed all that much since NT times, especially the behavior of human priests and politicians.

they're still after the same thing: more rules, more power for themselves.

nobody feels that they need more rules governing their own lives, but we certainly need more laws governing how they are allowed to behave, for many values of "they". so we elect the same old same old to do their thing to oppress/liberate "them", while "they" do the same, and before you know it, we're arguing about who should be allowed to live where (why pay for jail for sex offenders when they can become productive members of society (i.e. priests), so long as they're NIMBY?) or put what in which orifices or pay for whose kids to learn self-esteem rather than spelling, while meanwhile people who thought they were going to go to college are getting limbs blown off for... what again?

so what should we do about it all? hell if i know. i am reminded of my very first theological argument from grade school.

troy the athiest: there is no god.
me: oh yeah? then who created all the people and all the trees?
troy the athiest: i don't know, but it wasn't god!
me: so you admit that god exists!

this illustrates two things: the sort of dreck that passes for "political argument" these days, reminiscent of grade school sophistry, where sides are more interested in "winning" -- or at least demonizing their opponnents -- than coming to any sort of useful consensus, and the fact that just because you know what the wrong answer is, you're not obliged to proffer the proper answer.

after all, there may not be one. some problems have no solution.

perhaps we're all on the kobiyashi maru.