Voting is Still Wrong

I think that requiring everyone to cast a ballot in an election is not in and of itself a bad idea. The question as for any rule is what is the punishment for not complying. Instead of the negative compulsory vote make it a tax bonus for paying attention.  

Cueball wrote:

Not that it will make much difference to your post, since of course most of your posts are just repetitions of rote slogans and pseudo-philosphy, but I edited my previous post after you posted.

Were you afraid of the moderators?

Cueball][quote=kropotkin1951 wrote:

Cueball wrote:

KenS wrote:

Cueball wrote:

Re: I demonstrated several instances of "non-voters as agents obviously of some kind of importance":

The Czar's power was simply swept away because even the army and the police force, were unwilling to supress the revolutionary movement.

Really I thought that the Cheka merely became the KGB. I think the current fascist state that controls our country is about as ready to wither away as teh Cheka were in the Soviet Union.

I am not really sure what you are talking about. First of all, I specifically excluded from the discussion the "civil war period". That was the caveat. The Cheka (later the NKVD, MGB, KGB) came into existance primarily as a force to repress competing new power structures, such as those of the anarchists, Mensheviks, and the SR's, and this happens in the period that can loosely be described as the "civil war" period. The actual siezure (replacement) of power was actually quite bloodless, until the Bolshviks started centralizing and consolidating their grip on power, against their competitors. This doesn't actually have anything really to do with the collapse of the Czarist state.

Oh, and I didn't say anything about Canada being a fascist state. Keep your pants on. 

You see I don't see a period of easy transition and then something else. The problem with most revolutions is that the most brutal people with the best guns win.  So in Iran the marxists in the front were all murdered quickly by the fundamentalists. Etc.    

I just don't accept the premise that the power of the elite in our society will disappear because citizens stop voting. I also don't think that the people I see in Burnaby look like they are about to become the vanguard of a new revolution.  Most of them look like they are far more interested in the deals at Zeller's and Walmart than the state of the global economy and the historic opportunity they have to rise up and overthrow their masters.  

I don't know why you are concerned about my pants. I never said you said anything about our government being fascist. I said it, I did not attribute it to you. So stay out of my wardrobe please.

Cueball wrote:

Anyone who think people should face the courts for excersizing their right not to vote is a Fascist. Especially when they forsee the punishement as Jail. You are a Fascist. Simple.

This is not very nice. Stamp your feet three more times and then hold your mouth and nose shut until you get your way.

LOL  

Cueball wrote:

Anyone who think people should face the courts for excersizing their right not to vote is a Fascist. Especially when they forsee the punishement as Jail. You are a Fascist. Simple.

 

Cueball:

I was truly wowed [and I don't mean that factiously] with your discussion until you called the other fella a "fascist".

"Fascism" would imply he believes dictatorial governmental corporate, religious and social control which wasn't in any of his posts.

Putting people in jail for not voting isn't necessarily  "fascist"

Putting people in jail for not voting  could be  considered "Dictatorial" "Tyrannical" "Demagogic" or possibly "Theocratic" [if he believes it's your God-given responsibility to vote] but not necessarily "Facist", since fascists historically were voted in. [of course, once in, the voting stopped]

Well in the interests of clarity Cueball I put a wink there because I was jerking your chain, humorously.

You were doing a rather good job of explaining why those outside the system are better equipped to fight the system--a position I have been screaming at the top of my lungs about social services for years now. 

I am frustrated with those who are in the system claiming they are "changing it from the inside on behalf of the poor" which to me, is a load of self-delusional bollocks. What it is, is a way of keeping guilt at bay while pimping a middle-class paycheque by pathologizing poverty, state induced trauma and oppression.

Absolutely it's not a position guaranteed to win friends and influence people*sigh*

Your take on it is what fascinated me with this discussion. 

Until you pointed it out in the above--I never looked at the same concept from the viewpoint of vote/not vote idea. So thanks for the larger picture.

I’m posting to get you stop referring to Mussolini. Are you devoting a personality cult to him?

A Fascist state is an organic state. Its conception of totality revolves around a conception of an organism as a self-enclosed system. Therefore a fascist state is very scary when one particular individual comes to incarnate to head (or the will) of that organism and all other individuals are happy to see themselves as the arms of that will.

Cueball wrote:

But its not scary when the power of the state is absolute? What better conditions to create an absolute despot than one where "all rights are determined by a collective will", and the state can simply make up rules, because a majority decides what the collective will is, regardless of the will of the individual. Anyone can be shot for anything, just because 50+1 decide it should be so.

There are many ways to set a society on this path, and one way is to make a persons vote the property of the collective state, which will certainly become not a collective state at all when the majority of the collective decides, for example, to make Jews non-citizens. 

Regardless, you have admitted that you think Fascism is not scary when it is collectively fascist, as opposed to in the hands of a single despot. Only then does your collective Fascism become scary to you.

However, we know that a collective Fascism devolves into individual tyrrany, simply through the assertion of the right of the state to determine the actions and value of its citizens with absolute authority, which can be made up as we go along because "all rights are determined by the collective will, so why not..." whatever.

 That is why I equated your collectivized totalitarian state with Pol Pot, and his merry band of know-it-all "collectivizers."

 

That right exists only when some humans act as a group is simply a fact of life. A person can show that an order is not right only by showing to some humans acting as a group that the order is not founded on a collective will that is inclusive.

[/I don't know how this can be more existential thread drift] 

 Cueball Vs. Benoit: Samuel Beckett would be pleased.

 (not quite as good as "the NDP must make sure to keep steady supply lines, before monitoring it's artillery technology in WWII" thread.......but interesting none the less)

 

 [/ End I don't know how this can be more existential thread drift] 

 

Benoit wrote:

You have no way to know what my beliefs are if I don’t tell you: a person’s vote belongs to that individual as long as s/he is recognized as a citizen equal to any other one by a state. Allowing people to skip elections is allowing people to lose its identity and die slowly from marginalization.

Okay, I HAVE to challenge that statement because it is utterly ludicrous.

Marginalized people are marginalized because the parties and candidates in power and running for election do NOT reflect their needs. 

A bunch of white, upperclass lawyers do NOT represent the interests 80% of working class and poor in this country. Their "political identity" has nothing to do with the "identity"  of the majority of those who are marginalized.

If you haven't noticed, those "marginalized" people can't afford the luxury of starting political parties and running for office.  Hell, go to an all candidates meeting, if any politicians outside the fringe will even bother to show up in some poverty neighbourhoods. Look around the room for a while.

What in the name of Jeebus Tapdancing Cripes have the people on the platform  to do with the interests of the disenfranchised constituency on the floor many cases?

Voting in the next self-interested bozo looking for a fat pension isn't doing much either for this "marginalized neighbourhood", I can tell you. And we actually have some decent candidates who can't get past their own parties or parliament in our best interests.

So, you want to penalize people who chuck in their cards at the rigged poker game and refuse to play anymore?

Sounds like shoving a gun in someone's face and demanding they believe in "democracy". 

 

 

 

TVParkdale wrote:

Benoit wrote:

 Allowing people to skip elections is allowing people to lose its identity and die slowly from marginalization.

Okay, I HAVE to challenge that statement because it is utterly ludicrous.

 

The best example I can give is New Orleans: Because low electoral participation rates bring political corruption, Katrina has left residents of this city either dead or lost.    

Blaming the victims is an integral part of any deification process.

It’s not a thread about Layton but about voting. There will always be too much gossip about individuals and never enough deliberations about concepts.

Katrina is all about years of non-existent prevention.

Somebody's been reading the Watchtower news letter again?

JW's are as certain as other religious zealots that their views are the only correct ones. Believe has nothing to do with logic when it comes to religion. Blind faith in mysteries is always part of being a true believer. 

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From North of Manifest Destiny