Fast forward to Election Day 2008: Network anchors, cable pundits, and state and local election officials are going nuts as evening hours pass and voter turnout is hardly approaching 20 percent nearly everywhere. “What’s going on?” everyone is asking incredulously. TV and computer screens all over the planet show Americans in streets celebrating and shouting things like “We’ve had enough political corruption. We’re not going to take anymore!”
In contrast, news anchors are grim and aghast with little help from spin-fatigued and stammering Democratic and Republican spokespeople. At 2 A.M. on NBC Brian Williams sits with Tim Russett and Keith Olbermann, and sums up: “Americans have spoken and American politics have changed forever.” “It’s like the nightmare of entertainers: nobody shows up for their event,” says bemused Olbermann. Russett grimly observes, “We should have seen this coming; people have been fed up with both parties for a long time.” Meanwhile, the Internet is buzzing with talk of voiding the presidential and congressional election results, that President Bush may declare a national state of emergency, and that the Supreme Court might step in again. Did anyone think that the Constitution required a minimum voter turnout to make elections legit?
America’s political system is a large and complex criminal conspiracy. Most voters enable it without benefiting from it. Voting is a ploy of the two-party power elites to keep the population docile, delusional and duped. Our government has been hijacked in plain sight, despite elections. We cannot get it back by voting. All the main candidates are part of the conspiracy. Voting only encourages them. In our fake democracy corrupt politicians use doses of voting as a political narcotic. We must free more Americans of the addiction. Otherwise they will keep hallucinating that some Democratic or Republican President or controlled Congress will actually give us the changes we crave for.
Attempts to hold the government accountable have failed and will continue to fail. The system is rotten to the core. It sustains itself both by preventing major political reforms and undermining those that get passed to temporarily placate the public. Arrogant power elites feel no obligation to be accountable to the public. Elections are not a threat to the status quo. Elections are distractive entertainment, a political narcotic.
Voting became a political narcotic when it stopped working to improve government and became used to legitimize a corrupt, two-party failed government.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Why have we not had one in over 200 years?
Because as I think is abundantly clear, we've had no problem getting the resolutions which were supported by anywhere near the number of states needed to call an Article V convention through the Congress without having to actually call a convention.
Dave
2 - STM
More perverted "logic". Joel, if you don't vote, how the hell can you change anything. You're just playing into the hands of the two main parties.
Better to do what we do in Australia - introduce compulsory voting and make everyone vote (surprising how easy it is to rock up to the local public school on a Satutrday and get your name crossed off the list - last time in the state election, it took me 10 minutes from parking my car to sticking my vote in the ballot box).
The thing is, the parties know they have to listen to us, and without resort to manufactured issues pushed by lobby groups that we know are bollocks.
This coming federal election is being fought on good old bread-and-butter issues, and Australians are looking forward with great delight to giving comeuppance at the polling booth to a government that has become (this should sound familiar) tired, arrogant and inflexible.
You should be agitating for a process that gets more Americans involved in the electroal process (read: all), not less.
And for those who say it's an assault on personal freedoms and liberties, so is: getting a driver's licence, forcing kids to go to school, paying taxes, paying parking/speeding fines, etc etc etc.
Citizenship carries certain obligations, and one of those is to exercise your civic duty. Voting in a free and representative democracy is privelege, not just a right.
Wake up America, before the bastards rob you of what few rights you have left!
3 - STM
Story on BC as political narcotic.
Joel, you should be pushing for compulsory votingb to engage the entire community in the political process, rather than suggesting people don't vote.
That's perverted logic. You don't vote, you change nothing - and the bastards take away even more of the few rights Americans seem to have left.
And for those who think compulsory voting is an assault on a citizens' right, you could argue the same thing about compulsory driver's licences, taxes, schooling, parking fines, etc etc etc.
Make them (the major partuies) listen to YOU, rather than have them manufacture bollocks issues that totally polarise the voting intent. Keep it to bread-and-butter issues and punish tired, arrogant governments that have given up listening to the people who voted them in in the first place.
The place to punish and humiliate them? At the ballot box.
Stop voting, and you'll lose what freedoms you have left. Wake up America and smell the bullsh.t.
Ask Australians what they think of compulsory voting ... good, would be the standard response to that. Why? Because it gives us the power, all of us, not them.
4 - Dr Dreadful
Stan, is there much of a career for used garden gnomes with one facial expression?
5 - Clavos
Sure, Doc. They come here and run for prez.
6 - Silver Surfer
Lol. I'd gladly have Little Johnny head off over there ... but would it be fair to America? Yes :) Geez, there's a thought - Howard as leader of the free world. Fuck.
This is the most boring election ever in Australia, BTW ... with the two most boring prime-ministerial candidates ever. Rudd's just a Labor-style clone of Howard.
At least he's been to a strip club though, and claims he once had to live in his mum's car when his dad died and the family had to leave the farm - so he gets my vote :) But I don't think Howard's ever done anything wrong (apart from remove workers' rights that existed for over a century), and in Australia that's never going to win you any friends.
Those two STM posts above are supposed to be the same, but they're not - one didn't work and seemed to vanish into the ether, and I couldn't remember what I'd written (as usual)
7 - Lee Richards
If compulsory voting meant we paid more attention to the scoundrels in office, then it would be an improvement. Apathy doesn't work on crooks.
Because all politicians hate term limits, it must be a sound idea.
In many places in the U.S., now and throughout our history, it doesn't matter as much who votes as it does who counts the votes. It's always been the cheapest and simplest way to rig elections.
8 - troll
good stuff Joel...I suggest that you rework your opinion pieces down to 750 - 900 words -
9 - Dave Nalle
Troll, he could do an even better job by just posting a link to his last virtually identical article.
Dave
10 - Baronius
Joel, you can't have a protest that's indistinguishable from apathy. You need to open the window and scream "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more". You're advising people to close their windows and scream it, and that's pointless.
It's like boycotting a Robin Williams comedy. No one's going to show up anyway, so you can't claim credit for anything.
11 - moonraven
Gringos are dependent on every other kind of drug. Why not be dependent on the drug of voting.
Nobody counts their votes anyway--so it's about the same as shoving them up their noses.
12 - Baronius
Moon, you're a gringo.
13 - JustOneMan
ATTENTION ALL DUMBOCRATS - Send a message to Washington!!!! Prove that you hate Bush!!
DONT VOTE IN THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
That will show them!!!
JOM
PS Joel keep up the good work (yee yee LOL)
14 - JustOneMan
Heres the title of Joels next post...
Boycott the Boycott!
JOM
15 - bliffle
Joel has the right diagnosis but the wrong cure. Compulsory (actually, incentivised) voting is better, as the Australians have pointed out. You don't want to incentivise even more slackers: they're the easiest for dictators to rule. Too passive: until the damn bursts and then everyone is killed in a holocaust.
16 - Maurice
Hi Joel and happy Halloween!
You mention democracy quite a few times and I just have to point out that Jefferson said "Democracy is tyranny of the masses". He didn't like it. That aside I would say our Republic is functioning - not as it should but functioning. As an example I would love to see a change in Social Security. I am a firm believer in personal savings accounts and certainly in self directed savings. But not everyone believes the way I do. My will is defeated on that issue. Does that mean my vote is unimportant? No. It just means that we have a homogenous government where everyones opinion is considered but not all are accepted.
The republicrats and demlicans are becoming more and more difficult to distinquish. They have to be palatable to all ilks. They end up undesirable to all.
17 - Doug Hunter
Why would anyone support compulsive voting? To get the ignorant morons to the polls?
The less other people vote, the more your vote counts. Don't water it down with the votes of embeciles.
18 - Doug Hunter
Oh yeah, unless you think your party will get the votes of most lazy morons. (I suppose that does explain why Democrats seem to push more for this idea)
They know that the lazy apethetic crowd, if forced by threat of law to the polls and all else being equal, will vote for the party that promises to take away some hard working person's money away and give it to them.
19 - gonzo marx
MR sez - "Native Americans are not gringos, paleface."
yet, in another comment on another Thread she brags about her "strawberry blonde hair"
now..correct me if i am mistaken, but black hair is the norm for Native Americans, and black hair is a donminant gene, whereas blonde and red are both recessives
so, how does one with predominantly "Native American" DNA have a double recessive hair color?
but i digress...
Joel...give it the fuck up, d00d
what you fail to realize time and time again, is that your idea of a boycott is worse than a failure...for a number of reasons
not the least of which is the very simple Fact that if only ONE vote is cast....they win and the election is LEGAL!
Bob Novak once quipped on the air - "I like low voter turnout, it lets our base win easily"
time to cash your Reality check...
Excelsior?
20 - troll
gonzo - 3 points
1 - as it makes no difference whether a Dem or Repub wins who cares what Novak likes - ?
2 - there is a point at which low turnout will no longer be seen as apathy
3 - the organization underlying a voter boycott will serve further other acts of civil disobedience eg tax boycotts
21 - Joel S. Hirschhorn
Gonzo marx: your stupidity and inability to read and understand what I write is remarkable: You say: not the least of which is the very simple Fact that if only ONE vote is cast....they win and the election is LEGAL!
I say: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHICH DEMOCRAP OR REPUBLICROOK WINS - you seem intellectually incapable of understanding any of the substantive points I raise.
Troll, on the other hand, has a brain and uses it.
22 - troll
Joel - gonzo's a bright lad...don't dismiss his objections without consideration
23 - moonraven
gonzo: You may be a bright lad but you apparently did not read what I posted elsewhere a few months back--that I have strawberry blond hair because of a Norwegian in the genetic woodpile back in the day.
I am not complaining--with light olive skin strawberry blond hair is particularly striking--and olive skin is not thin like the typical pale redhead skin which ages poorly.
Lucky me--unusually beautiful, in all respects.
24 - troll
...a gawd dam goddess I tells ya
25 - moonraven
You had damn well better believe it!