If this election’s primary season for the Republican nomination hasn’t presented enough evidence to show us the truth of this, then take a look at this article on io9. Turns out, democracies only work when large swathes of uninformed individuals side with a perceived majority. Well no kidding. What else would cause an endless cycle of individuals voting against their every interest, relieving themselves of any ounce of power they might have held, and placing it in the hands of sociopathic millionaires? The fallacy that we are taught, that democracies only work when people are informed, is proven false every 2 years in America yet we go on believing we can make a difference in those booths.
I’ve written before on my lack of faith in democracy, at least in the way our society implements it, but with this article and the primary season in full swing we can delve into it some more. We see a roster of Republicans that I honestly have trouble telling apart (aside from Ron Paul, but he’s terrible for far different reasons, amazingly) and the electorate is given a choice of voting for one of them, Obama, or third party. Our system is built around limiting an individual’s choices to within a narrowly defined set of acceptable terms, so third party votes are essentially the same as not voting. Even if a mass uprising thrust a third party candidate into a winning position, the system has checks and balances in place to prevent such a choice – the establishment will always win in this system. You can see this at work already with the mainstream media’s attempt to completely erase Ron Paul from reporting because he represents ideas that are outside the scope of acceptable debate.
In our democracy the choices we are given are not really choices at all but different views of the same opinion. So of course widespread ignorance is required if people are going to see these “choices” and still participate. And not just participate – but become so emotionally and personally involved like we see today! It no longer matters that both D and R have essentially the same goals.
The coming Romney Vs. Obama election will show the country yet again that our government can give us two options of the same flavor and call it a choice.
Fat and happy from a wonderful family gathering over the holiday weekend, I returned to check my Facebook account this morning and was greeted with a liberal friend’s usual in-your-face Obama infatuation. This time, in the form of a supposed George Clooney quote basically putting down anyone who isn’t satisfied with Obama by making the point that Republicans could be made happy voting for him. I have pictured it for you here (click for enlarged indignation):
I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am. Democrats eat their own. Democrats find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.’ I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for people whom you’ve elected. If [Obama] was a Republican running, because Republicans are better at this, they’d be selling him as the guy who stopped 400,000 jobs a month from leaving the country. They’d be selling him as the guy who saved the auto-industry. If they had the beliefs, they’d be selling him as the guy who got rid of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ who got Osama bin Laden. You could be selling this as a very successful three years.
-George Clooney
First of all, it’s a pet peeve of mine anytime I hear some fucking celebrity tell me anything about politics, whether I agree with them or not. I don’t need some mega-rich asshole, who pretends for a living, to tell me what my best interests are. However, since I suspect that this election year we will be seeing a lot of attacks on people who are sick of Obama – let’s indulge Mr. Clooney.
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Throughout the Obama presidency, self-styled “progressive” liberals have invested so much of their identity and worth into electing and defending a man who has, in almost every sense, used them to advance an agenda no different from their worst enemy, George W. Bush. For every fundamental policy of the liberals’ once mouthed by Obama and subsequently ignored or destroyed, these people are presented with the option of admitting the error of believing and voting for another rich politician who has spent his or her entire career benefitting from the system exactly the way it is, or finding some way of twisting their logic into accepting another defeat and being proud of it. The banner raised over the heads of the individuals who choose the latter strategy is the eloquent and seemingly inarguable truth of, “Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good.” The meaning of course is nothing more than a defense of yet another destruction of your trust as its adherents are forced to pledge fealty to another crime committed in their name.
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When Republican Governor Scott Walker instituted destructive new rules for public unions, public outcry was enormous. I watched the news and saw pictures of thousands of protestors decrying unfair treatment of Wisconsin’s workers. It was obvious the energy was there, so what did the unions do to funnel that energy? Into a fucking voting booth where anything worth your time goes to die. In reality, if the union bosses wanted anything meaningful to happen to reverse these new limitations, they would have shut the state down with mass wild cat strikes within and without the public sector. It was obvious that the public was on their side, so why not? Because the union bosses have become part of the establishment, stationed to maintain the status quo rather than upset it. Now, we can look and see what a pitifully meaningless outcome has come from funneling all that anger into a voting booth.
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If voting were actually important to our legislators, why would they make it so hard to do? Thinking logically, such an important task should be made possible to complete with a minimum of effort so that all could make their voices heard and the transition of government could take place with all its constituents in mind, yes? We would want to make sure our “democratic” society actually functioned as such and that the opinions of the people were enshrined into the fabric of that very society. However, that doesn’t seem to be the goal of our voting laws. Practices that make it nearly impossible for large swaths of our society to vote ensure that those already with the power are the only ones overseeing it. As such, there is no such thing as a transition in government when the powerful are the only ones passing the baton.
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Coming off the discussion in the comments section of my last post, I wanted to talk more (or maybe just repeat myself some more) about the voting practices found in our society today. The U.S. government and the U.S. corporate media are ramping up the propaganda campaign for the next presidential election charade next year, so we’re all getting our regular doses of programming that feeds us with the merits of our electoral system and the importance of “doing your part” and participating. As if the solution to the myriad of troubles facing every one of us can simply be solved by tuning in once every couple of years and selecting someone listed D or R.
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As the distraction known as the 2012 Presidential election looms, liberal friends of mine are becoming increasingly defensive in their adoration of Obama and the elected Democrats in general. This blind allegiance is increasingly confusing to me because these people are otherwise intelligent and have opinions I respect. Why are we so stuck in this false dichotomy and forced allow such criminality to be committed in our names as long as the team doing it has the right initial next to their names?
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Hilariously, the predicted outcome of this month’s election has yielded ever more predictable outcomes. Barack Obama, who has never been remotely interested in the progressive agenda – yet curiously courts a large portion of the progressive vote (or used to) – now has the perfect cover story for the demise of any cosmetic hope and or change he might have been politically forced to introduce. The Republicans, destroyers of all that is good and holy, have achieved a majority status in our sacred House of Representatives. How then, are any of the things that our beloved leader promised us (and proceded to sit on his ass and ignore for two years) supposed to pass into law?
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I love elections. For some reason, since I was a child, they have always fascinated me. Not because I have some vested interest in what the results are or because I have a stake in candidate X or Y. I’m not entirely sure why but because of this, I stayed up late watching the results of the election on television. Though I was completely sober, the layers of dishonesty displayed by pundits, candidates, and analysts were so thick that I felt drunk. Meaningless phrases like “discretionary spending”, “big government”, “1994″, “loud and clear message”, “small business”, and “runaway spending” were thrown around so often that I had trouble following what was even being said. What it did clarify was how Americans could time and again return these thieves to power: the dishonesty is so pervasive that it creates an imaginary world with problems that don’t exist and solutions that could never work. Like Greek sirens, listening to these people will cause you to fall into this imaginary world and only leads to ruin for us all.
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