I’ll show you an absentee ballot. As the election looms, the Klieg lights intensify on the TP bogey-persons, TV talking heads harp about what a nail-biter this will be, pollsters dance with them that brought ’em, Michael Moore does his usual U-turn, to urge us to suck it up for the Dems, Medea Benjamin defends her eternal faith that activism “might” still move Obama, and ever multiple emails presume Obama’s options must be preserved at all costs, usually a donation. Again I anticipate hearing from a friend who monitors local precinct printouts and calls to whip his charges to the polls. I’ve lost count of how many Facebook prompts I’ve gotten to pledge to vote — but this time I’m going to make my ballot count. No amount of corporate-sponsored fear-based gap-closing civic-enthusiasm is going to coerce me to play this game. I will not support war, lack of health care, and class war unchallenged. The beasts unleashed by Citizens United will not buy my participation.
Neither the conservative assholes, nor the liberal bullshitters can have it.
They can have their tyranny, their obscene income disparity, their open war on nature and fellow-humankind. They can have their liberal pretense as the less bitter pill. It’s a dose of cancer either way. I would have a preference actually, if forced to choose between a quick execution and a slow death by hard labor, but I would rather resist than be compelled to voice it.
Silence is not consent, it’s none of the above.
What candidate have you got that’s going to make a difference? In Colorado we’ve got nothing but corporate energy, weapons systems cowboys. Our good-cop senate incumbent is a corporate, education-privatizing, warmongering Zionist who like Obama says he’s against all that. What you got?
Imagine if American election monitors insisted on dipping American fingers in purple dye to prevent vote fraud. The traditional media photo representing Iraqi or Afghan elections makes it obvious it’s really to provide graphic illustration of their buy-in to the election process.
We judge the democracy flag-planting in Iraq and Afghanistan based on election turnouts don’t we? Why shouldn’t that symbolic math apply here too? Would Americans vote if their purple fingers were paraded to demonstrate their faith in American Democracy? Fuck No.
Let the state media denounce it as voter apathy — they can call it what they want, I won’t be there.
Well, I don’t know if I can bear the thought of the Republicans doing all the voting. They have no ethics and they’ll turn out.
I decided to show my lack of faith in the two-wrong-answers-party-system by utilizing the write in candidate option and voting for my favorite bloggers. Go Democracy! (say it with absolutely no enthusiasm
Yeah, the pressure is on Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for his Rich-Bitch buddies, the ones who actually made money from the war, real estate fraud and other measures which destroyed OUR economy. BEFORE Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Save-Money-by-ditching-Solar-and-Wind just got a major shock that the proponents thereof aren’t advertising, coal took like a 50% jump in price this week. Colorado Springs Utilities is trying to reassure us that it won’t affect our rates immediately because they’re under contract at the lower price. Like the Bush Tax Cuts, it’s a situation of Pay More Later. Didn’t raise taxes on his Rich Comrades but sure as Hell raised the level of Tribute Money to be extorted from the working poor both domestically and abroad.
Also the massive outbound flights of materiel and personnel to VietRaqiStan have been a constant feature low-flying over our heads the past few days.
Babylon the Great has fallen, and become a cage of every unclean bird.
Translated to modern English, the Empire is dead and the buzzards are no longer circling, they’ve landed and made a feeding trough/nest combination in the middle of its still breathing carcass.
You have to have democracy to actually be able to cast a true vote. I don’t think that we can call this sick creature run by Big Business a democracy at this point… not even a partial one or a deformed one.
‘No amount of corporate-sponsored fear-based gap-closing civic-enthusiasm is going to coerce me to play this game.’
Yes, no ‘positive thinking that is actually its total opposite, or ‘pragmatism’ that always brings defeat, can change the reality. We simply don’t have a democracy to actually vote in. We have to construct one from almost total scratch to be able to then be able to truly cast a real vote.
I’m glad to see you ‘election’ time cognizant of where the country is at, Eric, as inconsistent as your voice has been up to this point. No big change is really ahead in the next 2 years as Americans are determined to play stupid as long as they possibly can about the need to go and fight for true change instead of just hoping that it is delivered to them all pretty packaged and without any real struggle by them needed or involved.