"Celebrating Un-President's Day: Why I will not vote for a president in 2008"

[Wiley50]

No folks, not me. I'm not quite to that point yet myself. It's the title
of an article over on OnlineJournal.com by Carolyn Baker. But I have to admit
she lays out her position on it quite eloquently and I found it a good read.
If anyone has a few minutes to spare and would actually read the whole piece
I'd sure like to get a discussion going on the validity of her rationale.

Here's the last bit of it:

(MODS: I'm keeping to the four paragraph rule but, the fourth one is an imagined conversation between Poppy and The Big Dog and the dialog is spaced. So I'm counting it as one.)

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2962.shtml



"You have no right to complain if you don't vote"

This nonsensical and frightening platitude sounds as if it might have been taken from Joseph Goebbels' propaganda playbook. What kind of tortured logic concludes that I can only complain about a rotting political system if I play by its rules? Whoever invented this notion had undoubtedly never read the Founding Fathers who asserted in no uncertain terms that if my government has become the enemy of the Constitution, it is not only prudent, but obligatory to "alter and abolish it."

I have every right to complain about "choices" that aren't really choices and election charades that distract my attention from issues that corporate clones dare not touch -- like the 200 species that went extinct today and the million innocent citizens of Iraq who've died since 2003 and the unprecedented numbers of U.S. military suicides in the same period of time and the carcinogenic bovine growth hormones in my genetically engineered lunch and the guy down the street who blew his brains out over mortgage foreclosure and bankruptcy resulting from having no health insurance and the polar bears that drowned today because their ice shelves had melted away. All of this happened while the election distraction served the same purpose as mainstream media coverage of Britney Spears' latest psychotic episode or the true confessions of yet another steroid-crazed athlete.

I will complain -- I will scream and rant bitch and whine, and I won't shut up -- and what I will complain most loudly about is a culture where citizens get what they settle for because they refuse to face the reality that the system is completely rigged against them, and they prolong their own agony by hanging on to the fantasy of business as usual as their empire, well into collapse, sucks the last drops of their blood and rides off into a Stage Five smog-alert sunset to rape and pillage and plunder the rest of the planet in the name of things like "democracy", "the two-party system", "Super Tuesday", and let's not forget, "the first female president."

No, I won't be voting for a president of the United States in 2008. Should I be able to use a paper ballot, I may well vote for state and local officials in a venue where authentic choice exists.

But it's only the nasty Republicans who rig elections, right? Well, have you noticed how cozy Bill Clinton and Poppy Bush have become since Bubba left office? The mind reels imagining those intimate afternoon conversations between Bill and Poppy on Senior's yacht.

"So what's on your mind, Bill? Do you mind if I call you Bill?"

"No, not at all, sir. Well, sir, I've been thinking a lot about 2008, and I know you know a lot about these things."

"Yes, son, I do, and trust me, everything's under control."

Sorry, I couldn't help verbalizing my fantasy. It's all so touching. Do you feel the love?

And now Hillary wants to send them off together in the first few weeks of her presidency to repair the damage done around the world by Junior? It's enough to make one feel warm and fuzzy all over, isn't it?

I think my cousin said it best when I asked if she planned to vote for a president this year.

"Me vote?" she replied. "No, not when my only choices are between Satan and the devil."

This article was originally published onSpeaking Truth to Power.
Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., is the author of Coming out of Fundamentalist Christianity and U.S. U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You .Her website is www.carolynbaker.org where she may be contacted.

[NV Whino]

1. This election

is a perfect case of you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

[blondeatlast]

2. Since this is about the eighth time I've read this argument in one form or another, can someone

please explain how aligning yourself with the approximately 40% of the population who never votes makes any sort of statement at all?

To me, it just puts one in the "why should I bother to win their vote" category and thus is completely self-defeating--especially if you PLEDGE not to vote. :shrug:

[Wiley50]

4. Well, to reply to both reply #1 and #2 together

I can't help but think:

I'm 52 y o and have been voting in every election that's been held
since I was old enough to and I can't think of one when I didn't have to
hold my nose and just do it, so I can't help but wonder:

In an age when the best candidates are culled out in the primary process by the media
so do I really have a choice (esp after what I saw happen in FL in '00 and Ohio in '04
and all I've learned since about the mechanism through which it was done) ?

I'm really coming to the concusion that she just may be correct. Even though it
is a comfort to think that our side is somehow more altruistic.

[Johonny]

11. I agree

One I see clear differences between the two choices I most likely will have for president. Second I can always find a third party more to my liking as the ballot will certainly have some of those. Third if I waited to vote only for perfect candidates under perfect election positions then I'd have to wait for ever. In the real world you have HAVE to vote for imperfect people under an imperfect system. You can make the system better, you can add more flavor to the candidates but you can't make the system perfected. You can't even hope to improve it if you refuse to vote:)

[pitohui]

3. so one decides to vote or not based on fantasy conversations?

i wonder if this writer ever reads bartcop's page, he has a lot there about people who just make up crap and put it in clinton's mouth and then pretend he (or she, when it's hillary) thought it, did it, said it

poppy has a lot of karma to work off because of the neglect of the hurricane andrew victims, the big dog is trying to reach across the aisle and get help from all sides to help disaster victims, how can this be evidence of satan working in the world? why shouldn't the big dog get these rich old fools to cough up some of their ill gotten gains to the unfortunate of the world?

do they really think these two ex presidents are swapping champagne and chicks on the yacht, no, it's business

obviously i think this writer's "article" is a total piece of crap, don't invent conversations between two people and admit you invented them and then expect me to be outraged at the actual people who didn't actually have the conversation in question!

[Wiley50]

5. I hear you and would agree if that was the supposed "meat" of the article

But, that was just a literary device she tacked ob at the very end.

which is why I asked that folks at least click the link and see what came before
which was a damn good argument for her case.

As far as Poppy's karma and Bill's altruism though,
they've raised a hell of a lot in the name of helping the folks in your area
hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now, look around you.
How much do you see around you that that money has been used to make better?

I'm aware that most of the time when the uber rich start foundations,
the real purpose is to avoid taxes and preserve their wealth for subsequent generations
of their own family

[earth mom]

10. No, the fantasy and delusion is that there are ANY dems in the race to begin with.

FYI:

People around DU are SETTLING FOR LESS.

Many of us around here have been trying to warn you all that:

Hillary and Obama are STATUS QUO candidates.

NOTHING is going to get better & it will probably get worse.

You can BANK on it!


But I guess I'll be telling you "I told you so" in a year-when it's too late, right?


Yup, it's a Choice between Satan and The Devil INDEED. :puke:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

12. Did you say BANK?

Securities and investments contributions:

Hillary: $6,035,184

Barack: $5,462,981

[blues90]

6. I will agree that it is high time people are not forced to

choose between media picked candidates once and for all .

We don't have any choice about who decided to toss their hat in the ring ( hate that saying ) but if the media was not allowed to steer and control the debates with their own questions , whether they are questions submitted by voters they do chose the questions asked in the end .

Some how this sort of media production has to end . All is needed is the camera and some realistic questions asked of each hopeful and give them time to answer .

Instead of not voting then people should have all the opportunity available to protest the choices the next president makes . Not through emails and calls to some machine but through a path that has direct results . This is what our reps are supposed to do but they have not .

If a rep does not follow the peoples wishes then place them on hault without pay as a warning and penalty , three times and the next rep is in . No more of this crap where they hold a seat for 2 years or 6 years and do nothing for the people who pay their saleries .

[NV Whino]

7. You are absolutely right about the media

I'm tired of having a media-chosen candidate forced down my throat.

There are many things that have to change to give us a candidate to vote for rather than against.

1. Media coverage has to change. They need to report not opinionate (if that's a word).
2. Public funding of elections has to happen.
3. Forget the "debates." They aren't debates anyway. With public funding, all candidates are given equal time to state their positions, which, by eliminating most commercials, will also eliminate the slimeboating of their opponents.
4. Revise or eliminate the electoral college
5. Revise the voting rights of the Super Delegates or eliminate the Super Delegates. Or let the popular vote determine the candidate and eliminate all delgates.

These ideas are not the total answer, but they are attainable and we need to work toward them if we are to get candidates that we support and that support us.

[blues90]

8. I agree with everything you said except public funding

And only for one reason , many people can't afford to donate to candidates or the mass off good causes out there . so the poor are left out of the system . They have no voice in anything and I wonder if they had the funds ot donate how many more good politicians we might have by now and how many more good public causes stripped away by this criminal in the whitehouse which should be funded through taxes rather than money spent of this military crap building bomb and jets and all sort of machines designed only to murder and kill .

as long as we condone war we will never get past the madness . If war were not such a big business we would be so much better off .

I can't believe people continue to vote against their own best interests and how little it takes for them to jump to the wrong ideas .

[NV Whino]

9. The public funding of elections

does not come from donations per se. It comes from taxes. (You have the option right now to contribute $3 to presidential campaigns on your tax return.) I believe that Arizona has public funding right now and it has worked wonderfully well. It has allowed people to run for office who don't have massive amounts of money. Gets fresh genes in the political gene pool. I'm fuzzy on the details, but it has been tried and it works. Keeps the corporations, who, of course don't like the idea, out of the mix.