Just because we're bereaved, that doesn't make us saps!So I guess village blurgher Ezra Klein called Joe Lieberman a senatorial version of Dan Burros and then some other dude at The New Republic suggested that Lieberman was a bad Jew because he couldn't do arithematic, or something. Blog! Well, the occasion sent me skimming through Mr. Klein's recent output, and it is striking how it tells the famous tale of stone soup in reverse . . . except somehow the moral remains the same. Basically, everyone starts out with a big pot of delicious hearty soup, and then all the residents of the village stop by and scoop out all the good stuff, and what's left is a half-full pot of rancid water and a hunk of rock. Delicious! Or, at least, better than nothing.
Well this is the partisan rearguard's answer to everything, isn't it. Better than nothing! They don't seem to be doing very well shoring up the flabby flank of Donk voters. Poor Matthew Yglesias is practically beside himself as he sees the motivated hope-n-change groundswell realizing that they might as well fuck it and go bowling for all the change they've seen. "Nobody ever accomplished anything in politics by not participating." Fuck you, buddy. I'll see your Mondale campaign and raise you a Gandhi. Consider youth absenteeism in the 2010 advertising cycle an act of civil fucking disobedience. The kids might not be right, but at least they're not idiots. Look, despite all the high moral hoo-haw that American civic philosophy has long stuffed into our politics like apples into a Christmas goose (or, you know, think of your own goddamn metaphor, you dirty fucks), non-transactional voting is just conscription. Why should anyone be obligated to fight for someone else's cause? Just for the record: I do vote in municipal elections, but when I vote for the guy who says he's going to address my pothole problems . . . I presume he is going to address my pothole problems, not make a big show of carting in a tracked excavator to tear up all the asphalt and then stick me with a bill for getting rid of the potholes.
30 comments:
Sir, I just wanna say, that we're both, on a personal level, really enormous fans. Who is IOZ?, especially the early episodes, was truly a source of inspiration...
We're hoping it won't be necessary to call the police.
Come on IOZ, had Dukakis won America would today be a land of milk and honey. I think we all can agree on that.
Oh man I love it when you cite wikipedia. But I always wonder why you do, and then I scroll down, and then its like a dark damp cave with giant glittery diamonds just laying around on the ground:
"Burros would sometimes bring knish to the American Nazi Party headquarters and make such outrageous statements as: 'Let's eat this good Jew food!'"
There goes the public again, letting the Democratic Party down.
"Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?"
The kids might not be right, but at least they're not idiots.
They are, but the decision not to vote just isn't evidence of it.
Voting is a religious ritual, like Tibetan monks spinning prayer wheels, with about as much influence on the outcome.
"Because in the end, this isn't about them." Oh, but it is.
@TGGP
Absence of evidence sin't evidence of absence ...
but one "idiot" withdrawing consent here, other "idiot" withdrawing consent there, and soon the whole house of cards is falling down.
I've seen from inside, and it's an awesome thing it happens (as long as you're not flattened by the debris).
The Christians
Hold on now. Don't you know that if Mattie had his way, we would've had Joe Lieberman sitting a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world!
Talk about "achieving things in politics!"
The justification for withdrawing consent through voting isn't that it will change anything politically, just that it's more time for you to do something that's actually worthwhile, like eating pork-rinds while watching reruns. It's normal for most people not to vote at all, the government isn't going to lose any sleep over low participation. Are these kids stopping traffic, as IOZ suggested? Are they putting their bodies on the gears, upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus to make it stop?
Not that I advocate actually stopping traffic, I think I'd run over any of you staging a die-in on the road to work, assuming I've got a job at that point.
IOZ, IOZ, IOZ ... hate the vote, love the voter!
Poor Yglesias. I'm sure he sees his dreams of a cushy administration sinecure fading away right before his very eyes.
Why should anyone be obligated to fight for someone else's cause?
Especially when you're expected to pay for it coming and going.
Hi,
Good one on The Sickness unto Death.
I recently found out 1 million children are accidentally poisoned in their homes each year. And also I did find the toxins we use in our home here www.debtfreeliving.healthyhometour.com .I think it's time we all know about the toxins we use.
Thanks,
Camilynn
First of all I'd like to request, nay beg that anyone who's got the know-how please head on over to camilynn's internet home and fuck it the fuck up. She/He/It came here to rape us, rape it the fuck back. And let us - and her - know what you did.
As for the subject at hand, abstaining from voting is - in theory - supposed to remove the veneer of democratic legitimacy from the "elected" government and thus make it more likely that a tipping point will be reached in the direction of some sort of non-electoral revolution. In practice however I doubt that's likely to be the case. There are a host of reasons for that which are obvious to local readers (American apathy and beliefs of impotence, corporate power, etc) but there's also some more fun reasons to consider such as the major demographic one wherein the sole visible group whose identity has been encouraged and who thus are most likely to revolt every so often without regard for what polite society tells them, is good and just, also happen to be by far the dumbest, and therefore least effectual, demographic in whom no long-term hope can ever be placed. All that they do ever end up accomplishing in fact is serving as a sort of vaccine to the system. Their little riots every so often wherein they kill people of similar socio-economic background to themselves help to ensure that no more effective physical revolt by an identifiable group will ever take place. It really is quite a system the Owners got going here.
RE anon at 6:40 a.m.: Camilynn, THIS is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass.....
As for the subject at hand, abstaining from voting is - in theory - supposed to remove the veneer of democratic legitimacy from the "elected" government and thus make it more likely that a tipping point will be reached in the direction of some sort of non-electoral revolution. In practice however I doubt that's likely to be the case.
Believe you me, a journey of a thousand li starts with the first step.
And that trip will come to a conclusion, and this Emprire like all others, will turn to dust.
Oh, you cannot see the end from here? We walk by faith, not sight
Ex-bolshevistically yours
The Christians
votings are like really really tasty communion wavers! BECOME ONE WITH AMERICA, MY BROTHERZ AND SISTERZ. no, seriously it's like a token ritual we go through to make ourselves feel better about. . .things.
You have to love partisans. Who else would follow "Vote for our candidates and they'll do X,Y and possibly Z" with "Not continuing to support our candidates despite their casual dismissal of doing X,Y or Z once elected is a sign of immaturity"? I mean, if a guy says "Suck my cock and I'll make sure you're hired to a decent job!" and post-listerine rinse, you notice that you're still unemployed, you'd be insane to take another pop in the mouth for the same offer tomorrow, right?
But David, what if it was an even better job?? What then?!?
Simple. Never trust anyone who says "and this time I mean it!".
But David, what if it was an even better job?? What then?!?
and that right there is the nut of the meta-cognitive ponzi scheme that Yglaysius and Klein and Digby and even. . .get this. . .Taibbi and Gleenwald are involved in. that's why they pull their punches. it's all about the right guy. the what? the right guy.
Fuck you, you apathetic slug man-beast!
that made me chuckle. thanks
Mr Fundamental, have you no shame at long last, sir?
Greenwald and Taibbi too?
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
same coin, different side. it's always spinning.
The Christians:
Are you sincere, or tongue-in-cheek? Either way, maybe, um, BLOG!
Defensively (perhaps fraternally) yours,
Friend of some Christian anarchists
Ruling Classy
No tongue-in-cheek here. Yes, I have seen first hand a Leviathan die - and it is a fact of beauty.
I doubt that I'll see the USofA Leviathan die in my lifetime, but does not make me less certain of it.
The Christians
When and where?
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