Parts 1-8

I apologize for not posting over the past few weeks the promised posts as to why voting is a ridiculous excercise in futility.  Over the past few weeks, as people learned of my decision to never vote again, I have been engaged in several debates.  There are only three outcomes.  Either person aquiesces, and then say something to the effect of “Then you can’t complain;”  or the person insists that voting is my duty as an american, saying something to the effect of “People died so that you could vote;” or, if they do engage, they insist that previous elections have statistically shown that voting truly does mater.  So, we will porceed, handeling the three major arguments in turn. 

The first is often espoused by the “left,” and involves the belief that my dissaproval of a certain government official can only be justified if I have participated in the election process.  First, I do not dissaprove of any single government official.  After all, they are just people who can’t cut it in the world of free competition have offered themselves up to masses for approval.  Unfortunately, we who do participate in actual society have left them no other means by which they can make the kind of living they so often feel they deserve.  SO, they turn to the one thing they can do: demagougery.  I have no problems with the individual, only the system.  I voice my right to decry democracy at every turn and will never criticize the people, only the system, in which I refuse participate because it is wrong.  People who vote, however, must never voice complaint with the system and live without complaint because whatever results from the election is the natural outcome of the system that the voter openly participates and relishes in.  I don’t want to hear complaints from voters about individuals.  

The patriotic folks and generally from the “right” and they believe that somebody died to give me the right to vote.  I say that nobody died to give the right to anything other live in freedom.  Hitler was voted in power, though indirectly, and so was Julius Caesar.  And yet we do hold these governments up as paragons of democracy.  Voting has nothing to with why people fight for this country.  People fight because there was something that country used to stand for that was paramount to absolute freedom.  But, it vainshes each year, with each vote.  Senator Amadala, yes of Star Wars, said it best when she said, “This is how freedom dies– to thunderous applause.”  Your votes are the applause.  

Finally, the statitistics people are the idiots.  The people who confuse stats with storys, fact for anecdote.  Statistically speaking, as more and more people vote, my particualr vote means less and less.  You may regale me with stories of counties that had voting come down to ten or fifteen votes, or even seranade me with stories of how in some far off fantasy land an election could possibly come down to a single vote.  But the fact remains that in the 2004 election, the most closely watched and closest election, saw a voter turn out of 121,480,019,  with margin of victory for Bush at 3,012,497.  Percentag wise this looks incredibly close, but in reality, one among three million does not look very impactful.  Those are the statistics.  And with this year promising even more turn out, the impact goes even further down.  

So what are we left with, a worthless political commodity given to everyone who isn’t a felon?  Yes.  And all of you voters out there would be glad to know that i have decided to vote.  Why you ask?  Because I sold my vote to a rube who thinks that it would make a difference.  So come the 4th I will be casting a vote for Obama, because i am being compensated for it.  I have a comodity that someone else values, so I have given to that person in exchange for something that I value: cash (and a free lunch).  

 

Rock the No Vote, or get paid to Rock the vote.

~ by justinhsc on October 20, 2008.