I like the above rationale for voting.

Dig it.

My presumption is that most who don't vote don't cause they can't be arsed. Of the rest the presumption is that if enough don't vote no government would have enough legitimacy to be able to operate and therefore there would be crisis leading to something better.

This is ludicrously optimistic but does have a logic to it and, at the moment, i am poor enough to agree with the latter and so don't. In this country (I English) I don't think voting makes much of a difference anyhoo as (defeatist talk alert!) the majority have this 'they won't get in anyway' attitude and vote for one of the two sides of the coin.

On saying all of this I remain alarmed at the amount of Americans posting who still don't seem to be making any issue of the fact (note word 'FACT') that your president is not the president by virtue of a free and fair election.

Allow me to make this assertion:

You are too comfortable to be arsed whether you voted for them or someone else just decided for you.

Earwicker wrote:
On saying all of this I remain alarmed at the amount of Americans posting who still don't seem to be making any issue of the fact (note word 'FACT') that your president is not the president by virtue of a free and fair election.

Allow me to make this assertion:

You are too comfortable to be arsed whether you voted for them or someone else just decided for you.

This is an incisive point (and downright un-American!)

While Bush is such a tool he's prone to speaking off script--making analogies that even his handlers can't foresee--this was part of a scripted speech at a military academy, and obviously planned.

There's more to the Cold War analogy than pure BS. Ideologically, the comparison strikes me as totally valid. The Cold War was a fear-mongering tool that provided the necessary frame for propaganda that legitimated the military industrial complex and corporate-capitalist neo-imperialism. And the War on Terror?

What's the color-coded terror alert currently set at?

No less than Andrew J. Bacevich said of the Cold War:

To conceive of US grand strategy from the late 1940’s through the 1980’s as ‘containment’ -- with no purpose apart from resisting the spread of Soviet power - - is not wrong, but it is incomplete…[S]uch a cramped conception of Cold War strategy actively impedes our understanding of current US policy…No strategy worthy of the name is exclusively passive or defensive in orientation…US grand strategy during the Cold War required not only containing communism but also taking active measures to open up the world politically, culturally, and, above all, economically -- which is precisely what policymakers said they intended to do.

At an ideological level, the War on Terror is very much analogous to the Cold War, it seems to me. Soviet expansion was certainly more of a threat to American economic interests than Al Qaeda, but as ideological constructs, the comparison's valid: the US goes to war in foreign lands to protect American ideals ("freedom," "democracy"). The same old.

simmo wrote:BC Clark, I salute your nihilism yet doubt whether you act by it in everything you do.

typical coercive mentality... if someone doesnt buy into your own sense of duty, theyre a nihilist. you evidently missed out on the fact that my comment concerned the ethical good that can be done for the world (ethical good... nihilism?)... my statement was that in regard to such ethical good, you will be minimally effective if you try to channel your energy through voting. tomorrow you will go out and drive your car somewhere and place tons of people at risk by driving a heavy piece of metal at 60 miles an hour (not to mention the pollution on top of that), and you think that type of volatility is made up for by your little vote? think in practical terms.

concerning "yet doubt whether you act by it in everything you do" this is an example of an ad hominem argument. if you disagree with the message, attack the message itself (not the messenger). for instance, if i am a serial killer, and i tell you that "its a good thing to not be violent," would my statement be invalid on the basis of what i practice? such a statement stands on its own as either true or false, independent of the messenger.

steve wrote:This self-satisfied isolationist nonsense is tragic.

Do you honestly believe it makes no difference who our President is? That the train of people he brings in behind him makes no difference? That the laws passed and the courts fixed, the power ceded, the structural changes made and the precedents set mean nothing?

If you really believe this, then you are a goddamn fool. You are saying that nothing that happens at the Federal level matters.

first off, you need to throw away this absurd sense of duty. second, you conveniently left out the question of "how much effect does a vote really have?" you didnt address this at all, but only assumed that it does have a significant effect, and proceeded to question why i wouldnt want to have such a supposedly significant effect. this is quite an assumption to operate under, especially when it comes to american voting.

are you saying that i should vote? because if so, i must reiterate my opinion that the effect of an american vote is trivial. if you dont think so, perhaps you should double check the size of the voting population and then divide one by that number. multiply that by 100. this percentage will show you precisely how much of a say you have in the president's election. and then consider the electoral college.

so if i am correct in saying that voting is trivial, are you saying that i should become an activist? because that is the only way i can see someone producing some sort of tangible good in the realm of politics. and even with regard to activism, you can do the world far more good by simply being a good person in your day-to-day affairs and not having a coercive attitude towards things. human destruction can only originate from a coercive mentality. environmentalism, for instance, sounds peachy until you learn about the eco-terrorists.

BClark wrote:
so if i am correct in saying that voting is trivial, are you saying that i should become an activist? because that is the only way i can see someone producing some sort of tangible good in the realm of politics.

I agree with you. Although, I wouldn't say that voting is necessarily trivial. But I think you are right to say that activism is the only way to make a real difference.

I made a tactical vote in the last election because of how dangerous the present administration is...

A good article about this subject:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200102--.htm

And:

Furthermore, I hope you will join all of us who refuse to submit to the massive propaganda campaign to focus attention, laser-like, on a highly personalized quadrennial extravaganza, instead of spending on this issue the 5 minutes it merits and returning to the serious work of opposing both evils, not supporting the greater of them (by rejecting tactical voting). And insofar as developing an electoral alternative is part of that, doing it the right way: that means constant daily work, every day, at local levels and on up, on all significant issues, not concentrating on the worst possible moment, when the PR extravaganza is peaking and nothing can be heard.

Noam Chomsky

BClark wrote:first off, you need to throw away this absurd sense of duty.

Where do you see a suggestion of duty? It seems a matter of both self-interest and human decency to me.

second, you conveniently left out the question of "how much effect does a vote really have?" you didnt address this at all, but only assumed that it does have a significant effect, and proceeded to question why i wouldnt want to have such a supposedly significant effect.

Let me address it now: Voting is the only direct effect you can have on your government. Voting is how members of the government are selected. If you abdicate your sole influence in this regard, you are creating the lack of effect you fear.

are you saying that i should vote? because if so, i must reiterate my opinion that the effect of an american vote is trivial.

I am not saying you "should" vote. I am saying your attitude toward voting is tragic. That you refuse to vote is your own business, but the rationale for it is self-fulfilling.

if you dont think so, perhaps you should double check the size of the voting population and then divide one by that number. multiply that by 100. this percentage will show you precisely how much of a say you have in the president's election. and then consider the electoral college.

Your vote has as good a chance as anybody's of being counted, and counting them is how we pick the guys in charge, more or less. Square odds are hard to come by, and it's odd that you won't take them.

so if i am correct in saying that voting is trivial, are you saying that i should become an activist? because that is the only way i can see someone producing some sort of tangible good in the realm of politics.

How does being an activist -- changing the way people will vote -- inspire this respect when the activist, in your estimation, is telling people to concern themselves with a "trivial" matter that has no effect?

and even with regard to activism, you can do the world far more good by simply being a good person in your day-to-day affairs and not having a coercive attitude towards things.

A person detained illegally by his government or suffering other injustice cannot have much of an effect by "being a good person." It is vital to remove the politicians that make that a possibility. This can only be done by voting. If you don't see how that is worth your time, then I can't help you.

And Rick Santorum will take that -- to the bank.

BClark: if nothing else you should vote to personally and spitefully cancel out the vote of somebody you dislike who you know is voting for some evil fuck.

also consider: not voting = voting for the status quo by default. guess what? they (yeah THEY) DON'T WANT YOU TO VOTE! IT HELPS THEM IF YOU DO NOT VOTE! and speaking of "coercive mentality," consider the insidious & therefore 1000x more effective coerciveness of electoral apathy and disengagement itself, the sneaky kind of coercion that appeals to a sense of superiority while it renders you powerless in effect.

also consider all the people who WANTED to vote and COULDN'T for whatever reason. yeah just throw that shit away.

zzzzzzzz

[quote="steve"]
Your vote has as good a chance as anybody's of being counted, and counting them is how we pick the guys in charge, more or less.
[quote]

Here it is again.

This is not the case in America. It seems to me that the act of voting is wheeled out in America as a pacifier. 'We'll give them their votes but we just won't listen to what they are voting for' kind of thing.

And it works. Everyone (voter) goes home smug and satisfied that they've done the best they can in affecting the government and buries their head in the sand when it is pointed out that your elected representatives were neither elected and are not representing you.

Suggestion: Universal sufferage has done the opposite of its original intention. It renders the mass ineffective because if the election is ignored the mass feel satisfied that they at least did what they could but a majority differed.

As long as you are comfortable it serves you well to not question the legitimacy of the leaders of the coup.

And you don't.

All this bleeting about how toppo voting is would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic. You have had your vote taken from you and YOU DON'T SEEM TO CARE!

But it's alright cause next time round you can exercise your right and vote them out...!?

Ho hum

*wakes up mad & still drunk*

i don't feel smug or self-satisfied AT ALL after voting. (every single congress-or-higher candidate i've ever voted for has lost except p. wellstone.) i don't even like doing it, at all, but i do it anyway.

nor do i discount the reality of electoral fraud and the immediate need to fix the fucked system.

consider the unparalleled efficacy of the thought "the system is UNFIXABLY FUCKED" in keeping people out of voting booths.

I wouldn't say your system is unfixably fucked it will just take more than elections (which are the fucked part) to fix it.

And does the fact that the people you vote for not being elected due to a rigged system (rigged by the people winning) not make you want to do something about it. (bear in mind what the thieves have done to your country. Remember - THEY WERE NOT ELECTED).

I mean you may be doing something about it but I'd like to know what out of interest. And that goes for everyone who has posted about how great and good voting is. What are you doing about the fact that your votes have been stolen?

I think it safe to say not enough people in America are doing anything at all and I imagine part of the reason for this is because they feel they can make their voice heard through the voting system next time.

The irony is not lost on me.