Former home of the compassionate telepath
6.03.2005,10:26
own it
So democracy is built on mass participation, which forces its supporters to have complete faith in total strangers that they too will keep the interests of the greater society in mind when they vote, and that they have paid close enough attention and sorted through the punditry enough to have a sense of what is going on, and lately I'm having a hard time believing in strangers. I've come to the conclusion that a great many people don't even really care who they vote for. Less than 35% of Canadians (okay, that number's form back in '97 when dinosaurs roamed, but bear with me) are partisan, that is, consistently identify themselves as a supporter of party X (or Y, or purple. whatever). There is still another 25-30% of the population who vote regularly, but according to Canadian Electoral Studies (they put out a book every election), more than half of that category hasn't decided who to vote for when they walk into the polling station. Meaning, I suppose, that they subsequently play einie-meenie-miynie-mo or pick the candidate with the funniest name or something.
Now, and let me make this clear, I'm not suggesting in any way that being non-partisan is necessarily bad. In fact, I think it's far preferable to being blindly partisan. What I am suggesting is that we should practice safe voting. Like safe sex, safe schooling, safe driving, safe traveling, safe anything, this requires at least some preparation and thought about where you'd like to go or what you'd like to do (or society to go, in this case) and a comparison of the alternate paths available for getting there. It requires that you do something in advance. But I think that those partisan folks are just as guilty as the einie-meenie-miynie-moers of practicing unsafe voting. How likely is it that a Chretien Liberal's view of an ideal society will necessarily be served by electing Martin, who's quite a different shade of red. NDPers on the East Coast who were big McDonough fans probably got quite a kick-in-the-pants surprise when Layton took over, what with his whole techno-urban focus. That is, if they were paying any attention. Which, I'd argue, most of them probably weren't (not even in Newfoundland, where, what with their new-found oil wealth, they finally have something better to do than bitch about Federal politics. Unlike me, I know, sadder than a Newfie).
I have a point, I swear, and this is it: most people care far more that they vote than who they vote for because that way they can feel like good little democratic citizens and not have to think abut anything to do with governance, the shape of our society, civil society, infrastructure, poverty, world affairs, peace, war, terror, famine, human rights, anything for another 4 years. That is, many citizens in democratic nations vote purely for the lovely feeling it induces that you no longer bear any responsibility for the ills of our society or world. Why? Because that's all up to the GOVERNMENT, and you did your part by putting an X on a piece of paper to help make that government. Ditto paying taxes. And combined, these ridiculously small gestures excise our guilt and responsibility so we can consume as much as we can possibly wear, carry, or fit in our mouths, buy shoes made in sweatshops, support deforestation in the world's last remaining rainforests with every McLunch we buy, throw out endless electronics containing toxic heavy metals that will end up poisoning the water somewhere you're very glad you weren't born (because dumping them is illegal here, silly), and spending a fortune on shit you don't need while still looking scornfully at the guy who asks you for change because if the government hasn't done something about him yet, he must deserve poverty.
OTSS right? We just don't mention that the S that stands for survive should read S over 9/10E because it's survival on the back of nine-tenths (at least) of the world's population, the working class, the poor, the hungry, the entire southern hemisphere (except Australia, another place the Brits did a remarkable job extinguishing non-White people) and BECAUSE YOUR WAY OF LIFE DEPENDS ON THEM NEVER GETTING WHAT YOU HAVE, YOU OWE THEM.
If they had what you have, they'd never make sneakers, and you'd be the barefoot one. If that sixteen year old whose single-parent family was struggling to survive didn't flip your McWich for her $6 buck an hour to help her mom keep food on the table, you'd be the hungry one. For their to be someone available to do the shit you don't want to, there has to be someone with less options than you, fewer choices and less distance between themselves and survival. By choosing a government and paying a pittance in taxes, you do not excise your responsibility to all those on whom your lifestyle depends. For every action there is a consequence, and you must take responsibility for every action you choose. If you buy sneakers that were made in a sweatshop, you choose to indebt yourself to those tiny fingers that worked for almost nothing to make them for you.
Yes, voting is important, we've learned that lesson, but government does not exist to keep us all from taking responsibility for our own actions and the choices we make. Honestly, right now, the world is so driven by consumerism and corporatism that all governments can really do anymore is follow in their wake and try to pick up what pieces they can to mould some sort of society out of the broken bits of lives our destructive habits leave behind. The people "beneath" you are essentially your employees. They are poorer than you because they can't make a lot of money trying to produce things cheap enough for you to consume en masse. They work for you because it's their work that allows your way of life to continue. The myth of the liberal individual is just that. We don't "make it on our own." We require the labour of thousands.
If there really is a god, and a jesus, and all that shit, then there really will be a rapture, and if so, please let them take every sweatshop labourer, every janitor, every minimum wage earner, every over-seas manufacturer who works for pennies so we can finally understand what it would be like to have to make it on our own, so we would stop believing that that's what we actually do, because nothing could be farther from the truth. Take them all off to heaven or shangra-la and leave us here in our piles of mass-produced filth to figure out how to live together for once, now that we've had to admit we need each other.
A girl said to me the other day, "I always vote Conservative because I think we do, like, really need to pay more attention to the environment, and like, the trees and stuff. You know, like environmental conservatation." I almost wept.
Now, don't even get me started on colonialism.
Now, and let me make this clear, I'm not suggesting in any way that being non-partisan is necessarily bad. In fact, I think it's far preferable to being blindly partisan. What I am suggesting is that we should practice safe voting. Like safe sex, safe schooling, safe driving, safe traveling, safe anything, this requires at least some preparation and thought about where you'd like to go or what you'd like to do (or society to go, in this case) and a comparison of the alternate paths available for getting there. It requires that you do something in advance. But I think that those partisan folks are just as guilty as the einie-meenie-miynie-moers of practicing unsafe voting. How likely is it that a Chretien Liberal's view of an ideal society will necessarily be served by electing Martin, who's quite a different shade of red. NDPers on the East Coast who were big McDonough fans probably got quite a kick-in-the-pants surprise when Layton took over, what with his whole techno-urban focus. That is, if they were paying any attention. Which, I'd argue, most of them probably weren't (not even in Newfoundland, where, what with their new-found oil wealth, they finally have something better to do than bitch about Federal politics. Unlike me, I know, sadder than a Newfie).
I have a point, I swear, and this is it: most people care far more that they vote than who they vote for because that way they can feel like good little democratic citizens and not have to think abut anything to do with governance, the shape of our society, civil society, infrastructure, poverty, world affairs, peace, war, terror, famine, human rights, anything for another 4 years. That is, many citizens in democratic nations vote purely for the lovely feeling it induces that you no longer bear any responsibility for the ills of our society or world. Why? Because that's all up to the GOVERNMENT, and you did your part by putting an X on a piece of paper to help make that government. Ditto paying taxes. And combined, these ridiculously small gestures excise our guilt and responsibility so we can consume as much as we can possibly wear, carry, or fit in our mouths, buy shoes made in sweatshops, support deforestation in the world's last remaining rainforests with every McLunch we buy, throw out endless electronics containing toxic heavy metals that will end up poisoning the water somewhere you're very glad you weren't born (because dumping them is illegal here, silly), and spending a fortune on shit you don't need while still looking scornfully at the guy who asks you for change because if the government hasn't done something about him yet, he must deserve poverty.
OTSS right? We just don't mention that the S that stands for survive should read S over 9/10E because it's survival on the back of nine-tenths (at least) of the world's population, the working class, the poor, the hungry, the entire southern hemisphere (except Australia, another place the Brits did a remarkable job extinguishing non-White people) and BECAUSE YOUR WAY OF LIFE DEPENDS ON THEM NEVER GETTING WHAT YOU HAVE, YOU OWE THEM.
If they had what you have, they'd never make sneakers, and you'd be the barefoot one. If that sixteen year old whose single-parent family was struggling to survive didn't flip your McWich for her $6 buck an hour to help her mom keep food on the table, you'd be the hungry one. For their to be someone available to do the shit you don't want to, there has to be someone with less options than you, fewer choices and less distance between themselves and survival. By choosing a government and paying a pittance in taxes, you do not excise your responsibility to all those on whom your lifestyle depends. For every action there is a consequence, and you must take responsibility for every action you choose. If you buy sneakers that were made in a sweatshop, you choose to indebt yourself to those tiny fingers that worked for almost nothing to make them for you.
Yes, voting is important, we've learned that lesson, but government does not exist to keep us all from taking responsibility for our own actions and the choices we make. Honestly, right now, the world is so driven by consumerism and corporatism that all governments can really do anymore is follow in their wake and try to pick up what pieces they can to mould some sort of society out of the broken bits of lives our destructive habits leave behind. The people "beneath" you are essentially your employees. They are poorer than you because they can't make a lot of money trying to produce things cheap enough for you to consume en masse. They work for you because it's their work that allows your way of life to continue. The myth of the liberal individual is just that. We don't "make it on our own." We require the labour of thousands.
If there really is a god, and a jesus, and all that shit, then there really will be a rapture, and if so, please let them take every sweatshop labourer, every janitor, every minimum wage earner, every over-seas manufacturer who works for pennies so we can finally understand what it would be like to have to make it on our own, so we would stop believing that that's what we actually do, because nothing could be farther from the truth. Take them all off to heaven or shangra-la and leave us here in our piles of mass-produced filth to figure out how to live together for once, now that we've had to admit we need each other.
A girl said to me the other day, "I always vote Conservative because I think we do, like, really need to pay more attention to the environment, and like, the trees and stuff. You know, like environmental conservatation." I almost wept.
Now, don't even get me started on colonialism.
