Get off your high horse and vote!

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday May 15, 2002 00:58 by Aengus Hearne hearne at gofree dot indigo dot ie

(For that lofty steed is a three legged ass...)

Reasons to reclaim democracy.

I’ve formed the impression over the last few days since first checking out this site and watching the people on last Fridays Late Late that many of you who contribute to and read this site, despite strong political views, are not planning to vote this Friday.
Congratulations, you throw away any real influence in this society you have and make it that much easier for the very people you disagree with to dismiss you and walk all over you. After all, you are handing them the balance of power on a plate.

You are being complacent and apathetic and you deserve the state you get i.e. one with a police force that is accountable only to itself and feels it is OK to beat you off the streets because you have different beliefs and haircuts.
By not participating in the existing democratic process you marginalise yourselves and give people no reason to take you as seriously as say the cab drivers, farmers or truckers.

I have heard some of you say that you want to completely tear down the established systems of government, you want revolution. Revolution means blood. I have heard no one say what it is they plan to do afterwards, how they plan to replace the structure we have now.
The anti-capitalists blame capitalism for all the evils of the world, but this system is no more inherently evil than communism is, it’s what you make of it (for an interesting account of an enlightened and evolutionary way to work and live within the capitalist system read ‘Open Minds’ by Andy Wall, -essential reading-, there’s a copy in the ILAC library).
The multinationals would not be able to act as they do were it not for government policy.

I would like an anarchist to please tell me what it is you want. Do you want a complete absence of government and social structure? If somehow you achieve that it will last about 5 minutes (and I mean that literally), it is a bizarre ideal that ignores our basically tribal nature, we need the gap to be filled and you either return to a dictatorship, or you build a new democratic structure. The entire complex social structure that we have has evolved as it has in order to stop individuals having too much power and influence.

If you don’t like your current crop of candidates then just vote for the least worst because every one of your votes not used is effectively a vote handed to your opponents.
It’s easier to adopt the ‘us vs. the state’ mentality and complain about ‘the state sponsored violence of the gardai’ etc. than accept the responsibility that *we are* the state.