| The Immorality Of Voting |
[Apr. 6th, 2012|10:19 pm]
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I do not often write about politics anymore, mainly because I don’t believe in it. That is to say, I have been made aware, both from the track records of all politicians I have observed in my 50 years, as well as from the comments of our poets, musicians and movie makers that, as Greg Lake put it, “We never learn even deserts burn and all politicians lie.”
As I explained in an earlier entry, politics is like a spectator sport many play for fun. And as such, it really doesn’t matter which side of the stadium you choose to sit on. You get what you vote for, and if you vote for either of the 2 main choices you are voting for a continuation of the same. And, considering the downward spiral you’d be voting to continue, that would be like voting for national suicide.
Still, I had been thinking that, as we live in a theoretical democracy, the people are free to vote for suicide if they choose, and what they choose they should have. Indeed, if that’s what they want, it would be immoral of me to deny it to them.
But today I was thinking about the morality of voting itself, as the father has been doing a lot of rattling on about how he has traditionally based his votes on how to put the thief in office who will give him the biggest part of what he steals.
And it occurred to me that if you vote in the knowledge that you are only given the choice of two thieves, two liars, or at best two colossal idiots who would still drive the US to destruction, even if they had the best of intensions, there is no way it can be considered moral to vote.
When we vote under these conditions, we are deliberately lying to ourselves, pushing information we are well aware of to the back of our consciousness in order to carry on doing something we have been conditioned to think we must. We insist on accepting that we are obligated to make a choice between two thieves, and that by placating this sense of obligation we are somehow better off.
But, look around you. Look at how your quality of life has suffered because you voted a Republican in for 8 years, and then a Democrat in for 4. Didn’t you vote the Democrat in because you didn’t believe anything could possibly be worse than what The Republicans were doing? And didn’t The Democrats waste no time in proving you wrong? And now, are you ready to slingshot back to voting Republican to keep The Democrats out?
What reason does anyone have to think things will get better if you just keep bouncing back and forth between two parties that have equally proven themselves failures, liars, and totally detached from the reality of the common people?
Basically the only reason to vote is because you are interested in slowing the descent. You have to know by now that neither of these parties has any interest in heading back towards the surface. They’re going to keep taking us down until we’re in too deep to ever be able to come up for air again. That is, if we keep voting for our own suicide.
If you take suicide to be a sin, or just an idea you find personally repugnant, it can’t be moral to vote for anyone that you have every reason to believe means to destroy everything you need to live and be happy. It would be stupid to do so, but stupidity is not immoral. I just find it difficult to believe that so many Americans, be they rich or poor, could be that stupid. But they could be, just possibly, that immoral.
Why is democracy always prone to eventual failure? Because the success of a democracy depends on the morality and idealism of the people. If the people are human and naturally prone to selfish interests, they will always vote for what they think will be of most benefit to them, as opposed to what is best for all, or at least the majority.
Take the father for instance. He knowingly votes to put thieves in office, in order to get his share of the stolen resources. That’s like knowingly receiving stolen goods. But no one ever stops to think who it is that these resources are being stolen from. Mainly they are stolen from the children of the future. So, while we are morally indignant in persecuting those who rape children, and we think ourselves such fine upstanding moralists for this, we never consider the raping of future children we are personally taking a hand in.
We have voted to deprive the children of the future of education, quality of life, and everything else, up to and including freedom itself. And, as for the children of other countries, we have voted for their starvation, and even their violent slaughter.
Oh, what fine moralists be we who create rhetoric to shelter us from every pang of conscience. How great are we who can commit any atrocity, and yet be considered blameless in our own minds. And woe be tied anyone who does not agree with our self-perceived state of blamelessness.
Another question I’ve pondered on in recent times is why has Christianity become so much more visible and influential than it was in my youth? I realize now that, the more immoral a collective society becomes, the more it needs something to assure itself and the world that it is moral in the extreme. And that is why Christianity is so popular in this decade, when it might actually have been on its way out in the early 70’s. Or it had been relegated to a position where its influence was there, but in proper proportions that were actually beneficial to the state of our morality, rather than a detriment to it, as Christianity can easily be these days.
It’s a crutch, or more accurately, a patch we try to put on a fast leak. But it’s not stopping are true morality from escaping us. And it’s not going to stop us from being a country of moral flat tires in the end.
But, again, it’s a theoretical democracy, and the people have voted for this state of immorality, while voting down the sacred ideals on which this country was founded. Why? Because, let’s face it, as the song says, we’re all a little bit racist. Some of us are a lot racist. Many of us are a lot greedy. While the majority of us are nowhere as intelligent, selfless or compassionate as we might have been if raised during earlier times. Thus, as a nation, morality and common sense just aren’t important to us anymore.
So I was thinking, if this is what the American people are, and this is what they vote for, then there is no problem. The people have voted for what they want. They’ve been given it. All is as it should be. So, all that is necessary for someone like me to live here is to stop looking for the ideology of the founding fathers to be employed here, recognize that I do not live in a free country, and make the best of what comforts are available to me without freedom, just as the folks in all the other countries do.
America is different now, a binary dictatorship, ruled by a choice of 2 conglomerates of corporate tyrants who will plan and execute the deaths of untold thousands in other countries, the unemployment of untold thousands in their own country, and on and on, up to and including plotting the destruction of the world as we know it, all just to add a few zeros to their bank accounts. What’s wrong with that, if it’s what the once free people of the US have voted for? It is exactly what should be.
And this is why I don’t vote, because this is not what I want. And until I am given the option to return to the ideals I was raised on – until I can listen to those old patriotic songs without snickering, “Yeah, right,” it would be totally immoral for me to vote.
It is not a moral obligation to support the majority. The vast majority of Americans can be, and are, wrong. But it’s not immoral to be wrong, unless you know you’re wrong, and you deliberately go on being wrong.
Morality has nothing whatsoever to do with the crowd. Morality has to do with the individual holding him or herself up to the highest standards of righteousness and fairness they are capable of conceiving. Show me a candidate who knows this and demonstrates this with every word and action, and I will be moved to get off my tail and vote. Until then I will not be immoral enough to vote for less.
I know some people are going to come up to me and say this expectation is unreasonably high and I should vote for the best that is offered, rather than insisting on something that is morally perfect. But I have more faith in humanity’s ability to produce an intelligent individual with a perfect sense of morality and fairness than they do. I believe I do have a right to expect perfection of a candidate.
But, of course, parties do not look for such people. Parties look for someone they think they can count on to further their agenda, and nothing else. And though a single agenda may further the interests of some of the people, it takes many, many agendas to serve all of the people. Therefore, voting in the candidate of any party is furthering the interests of only a small segment of the people. And you can never be sure if that group of people includes you.
You may think it does because they’ve said so. But remember, parties look on honesty as a liability. They are looking for the candidate who will do the best lying for them. Thus it just naturally follows that, if you vote in the candidate of any party, you will not get an honest man. You will get a man who has sold his soul to the special interests that back the party, and you can expect to be lied to from there after.
There is no need to come up to me and deny this is true. It’s not a theory. It’s a well-established fact that no one even tries to hide anymore. It’s something we’re asked to know, but carry on as if we didn’t know. As if we ever expect anything to be put right by lying to ourselves. Yet every 4 years or so, many of the best people in this country do just that. They go through the whole voting process in a state of willful denial.
Someone will now surely remind me of the lyrics I quoted at the beginning to the effect that it’s idiotic to expect honesty and morality of any politician. And since we’re only allowed to vote for politicians my demands are unreasonable, and I should join them in fruitlessly trying to slow the descent of the country. But I say to this there is nothing in the constitution that requires a candidate to be a politician, or to belong to a party.
I think, when such flawlessly just people are spotted in our society, they should be nominated by the people on the basis of the good works they’ve demonstrated, rather than electing people on the basis of rhetoric and promises they’re under no obligation to live up to.
We also need to remove how much money a candidate has at their disposal from the decision making process. Surely we know by now that money is the root of all evil, and a voting process based on money can not help but have an evil outcome. Airtime for candidates should be donated by the networks and equally available to all candidates. It should not be necessary for anyone to have a million dollars to be equally considered for office.
Furthermore, the public needs to be educated to the ways of the snake oil salesman. The public needs to be educated, period. One of the greatest detriments to America’s ability to elect quality leadership is the country’s collective low IQ, resulting from the decline of our educational system. Find a candidate who is willing to fix that and give the population back its ability to think, and you will know this candidate is not as self-motivated as the majority of the others who thrive on America’s ever increasing state of collective ignorance.
I also think it should be made, not only illegal, but a capital offence for anyone being considered for office to accept any money or gifts from special interests. Lobbying should be called what it is, bribery, and treated accordingly. And voting one’s party rather than voting one’s conscience should be considered a disgraceful dereliction of one’s moral duty.
There must also be instituted a system by which the people can eject elected officials from office when they disgrace themselves. The Nixons and Bushes should be held accountable for any crimes they are accused of, obligated to prove their innocence to the satisfaction of the people. And if they can not prove their innocence, they should be automatically ejected from office.
It makes no sense for the people to accept an inquiry and impeachment process that is so slow the person in question has lived out their term and been pardoned for all crimes by their successor before the thing has a chance to get moving. We should have a system designed to insure the integrity of our leadership, not one that guarantees they can get away with murder on a mass scale.
In a discussion with friends recently I brought up the example of The Pied Piper. The people go to the government and say, “Get rid of the rats or we’ll get rid of you.” That is how democracy is supposed to work. You should be able to say to anyone you grant such power to, “Do the job we have hired you to do. End these wars, end these high gas prices, end this unemployment, end these disgraceful education and health care situations, or we’ll take the power we grant away from you and give it to someone who will.”
The government should live in fear of the peoples’ power. Not vice versa. Anything less is not what the founders of this country had in mind.
There is no reason on Earth for conscientious Americans to settle for anything less than perfection where the integrity of our leadership is concerned. Why? Because in the end they represent us. And when people in other countries start dropping bombs on us because of what they’ve done, we don’t really have the option of saying “You’re dropping bombs on the wrong people. We have no control over what our government does.”
That is total bull. Every crime those bastards commit is the responsibility of everyone who votes to keep them in power – everyone who doesn’t make it a condition of their continued employment that they don’t burn children in other countries, or squander the future of children in their own country. It is the fault of everyone who can not turn honestly to the past, present and future victims of our government’s folly to state with tearful sincerity, “I did not vote for this. I did not defend this with word or deed. And I protested it at every available opportunity to anyone I could get to listen.” |
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symphonic_rp
thoughtful
