For Those of You May Be Thinking of Not Voting...

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I should have noticed that months ago. It's what happens with all college students: They discover something new, whether it's politics, psychology, art, or sports, and it becomes their god. Of course they can't see that the people they label "idiots" are exactly like them. They just discovered a different god.

It's probably only because I see it every day at work. The term sophmoric should not only apply to second-year students.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Amen to that. As I keep saying since long time: voting is not so much a right - that is just a formal framework; in the first it is a skill that needs to be achieved, needs to be learned and trained.

Sorry Skybird, but voting in a democratic society is not a 'framework'. It is a right; a right granted to all American citizens of the age Majority by the Constitution of the United States of America. If you want to argue that people should be informed about their choices when voting, then I can agree with that, but not your assumption that it is not a right. The ignorant have the same rights as I do.

In other words, like with opinions, it is not the vote you cast or the opinion you have that makes it already precious or important in itself, but whether or not you can found it by factual information and reasoning. That'S why I do not appreciate and value just any opinion on the mere and only basis that somebody happens to have it. I look at if he can give reasons for it, and what these reasons are. Only then I maybe can respect even an opinion that I do not share. But never just because it is there! That would be stupid.

Respect for one's decision of vote, whether it be your's, mine, Steve's, vienna's or Bubblehead's is irrelevant. A citizen of this nation may vote and does not require our approval.

However, and this might be where we start to disagree probably, I keep on saying: don'T vote. Boycott elections. Help to bring down the turnout so that those hidden elites in the background profiting from the system's rules and pulling the string in reality can no longer hide behind it. It does not matter which party or candidate you vote for - you legitimise the system itself which will stay, no matter your vote, and that system runs by corrupted rules and plays a cheated match.

Not being able to select one's leader(s) doesn't have a particularly great track record either. I assume that you've read enough history to know that. The current system, while not perfect, is certainly better than those in the past.

In this SF movie "The Island", 2005, there is this population believing in this lottery they have, that chooses the happy daily winner to escape life in the boring subterranean complex they all live in, and spend the rest of his life in a paradise. But the paradiuse doe snot exist. In reality they all are clones, bred as living organ banks, and when the lottery chooses them to go to the happy island, in fact they get killed and their organs removed.

Wow. Did you really just compare voting to compulsory organ harvesting? This is where those fallacies that I was talking about come into play again.

Do not fall for the illusions you are being told. Those you elect, anyway think you are just stupid, and all time long you prove them to be correct. You fall for their slogans, you legitimise them in their functions although you know they will corrupt things even more, and tailor the syytem more in favour of their monetarian and idelogical missions. Just listen to them while they tlak to you when they want somethign from you, and you can hear it in every senmetence how stupoid and dull they think you are. They do so, becaseu they get away with it, and they know it. Maybe you are no living organbanks still(although considering the events and media campaigns about organ donors in Germany one could start thinking politically very incorrect thoughts here...). But you are working drones for the few and their material as well as their ideological demands. And they keep alive this illusion of elections as a relief valve for pressure that otherwise might turn into an uprise against the cheated rules of the game. Whatever it was our forefathers suffered for and fought over to overcome aristocracy and theocracy and tyrannic regimes - the betrayal that we have today is what it was not about. This it is not...!

Don't vote. Nur die dümmsten Kälber wählen sich ihre Metzger selber.

I can't, and do not really wish to address your conspiracy theories, but I can gaurantee you that if you don't vote, you'll have a much better chance of seeing them realized.

[vienna]

Or is that bot translation correct? I admit I do not understand it in full.

I used a few different translators and then just responded using the general gist; the general gist is not far from your version; virtually a case of "same difference"...

Basically, it still boils down to this: if you don't play in the game, you can't make the rules or have the authority to complain about the results...

EDIT:

I just realized I misunderstood your misunderstanding of my posting; I was not offering a translation of the German quote, rather. I was making a response to the quote. I did not bother giving a translation; to those who do not read German, look it up and translate it like I did...


<o>

[GT182]

Originally Posted by vienna

Basically, it still boils down to this: if you don't play in the game, you can't make the rules or have the authority to complain about the results...

Exactly. No vote No voice! In other words, if you don't vote and the one you wanted to win doesn't.... then don't bitch about what the winner does. You COULD have made a difference.

[Skybird]

If you participate in legitimizing the corrupted and corruption, you have no right to complain and criticise the corrupted and corruption, for you helped to establish and strengthening it. You are an accomplice.

And don't deceive yourself. Making a cross on some list every four years, does not mean you have a say. If this shows anything, than only that you have no say at all.

The names on posters come and go - the game stays the same, the corrupted rules stay the same, and that real hidden elite or hidden government, that amalgam of business lobby and political elitists stay the same. It's the same clans and the same secret circles.

And you have no say in their round, voting or not. All the circus you take so serious, is just set up to keep you distracted, and unaware.

I had this in my signature some weeks ago:
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people." - Theodore Roosevelt

I remind of Eisenhower's farewell speech on the military-industrial complex.

This combines both and illustrates just one perspective on the problem, defence spendings.

The policy of the two parties in the US, since decades is dominated by just the same generations-old family clans like the Bushs and the Kennedies, both acting before and behind the curtain, and some more that are less big and less influential, nevertheless are present in US poltics since generations. There is a name for that: feudalism. In Europe, such quasi-feudal structures have been established, too, in the form of parties and life-long career politicians whom you never get rid of by voting them out, since you cannot (they always return in some other post), but by them retiring from their career due to age reasons. They use parties as an industry which has this product to manufactuer: career politicians of a certain character shape and mindset, a production process that does not allow to build other models

You can call this freedom, and democracy, the right of free expression allows you to do that. I call it an empty, hollow facade, and I say since long time we live in the post-democratic era.

Oh dear, in one year, the campaign circus will run in Germany as well again. Brrrrr.

Strip them off the legitimation, the only one they need to continue, the turnout that is. Make them stand naked and without support, then they cannot claim to be legitimised by "the people" anymore. Keep the turnout low. Don't vote. If then they still cling to power, you have the moral right to revolt and start a revolution. As long as you legitimise them and their ways, you have not, and should be the dog sleeping at its master's feet.

[Takeda Shingen]

Okay, that's great.

Moving on, it seems to me like this election should have some pretty good turnout. I see lots of signs around the neighborhood, although they will probably all be gone, one way or the other, by the time that Sandy shows up on Tuesday. A lot more, in fact, than I saw back in 2008. It's nice to see that kind of participation.

[vienna]

You're lucky, Takeda; as I mentioned before, here in California, neither party or candidate is bothering to do anything other than fundraising. If it weren't for the satewide and local contests and issues, you wouldn't even know there really was an election upcoming...

<O>

[Takeda Shingen]

I suppose that makes sense. Although Pennsylvania isn't all that 'in play' (I think it seems that it is going to Obama), California always seems perpetually blue, if you will. While there is not a whole lot of campaigning going on here relative to places like Ohio, it is probably more than what you are seeing in California. I can understand people not being motivated to vote.

[Oberon]

It could be worse...

You could live in Las Vegas:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/us...pagewanted=all

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It could be worse...

You could live in Las Vegas:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/us...pagewanted=all

73,000?! Holy crap. I mean, I agree that every vote is important, but that many ads for 6 electoral votes?

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by vienna

This veteran died not long after casting his vote and a question arose of whether his vote should be counted:


And anyone who tries to invalidate his vote, the highest shame on you...

Not shame, more enforcing the law. In some states (I don't believe HI is one of them) in order for a vote to count, the citizen must be a registered voter on the day of the election.

South Dakota and Wisconsin are two such states that I can recall off hand.

We are still the United States of America and hence each of our states has different laws concerning elections.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by GT182

Exactly. No vote No voice! In other words, if you don't vote and the one you wanted to win doesn't.... then don't bitch about what the winner does. You COULD have made a difference.

The only problem I have with that is the electoral system as it affects small States like mine. I might agree with that old cliche if they only had a box that says None Of The Above.

I'll be writing in my preference yet again. I vote for who I want, not for the lesser of however many evils.

Originally Posted by Skybird

If you participate in legitimizing the corrupted and corruption, you have no right to complain and criticise the corrupted and corruption, for you helped to establish and strengthening it. You are an accomplice.

They say if I don't vote I can't complain. Now you say if I do vote I can't complain.

Everybody keeps telling me what I must do, and I don't believe any of you.

[eddie]

I'm going to vote, then complain about how long I had to stand in line. If whomever I vote for doesn't win, I'm going to complain about that for the next 4 years.