eumaas wrote:National politics is entirely bound up in and controlled by impenetrable elites. You can sneer all you like, but I think that working on bettering myself as a human being and working with others on a local, person-to-person level is more worthwhile than being involved in electoral politics. I'm interested in non-state solutions, doing what the Preamble to the IWW Constitution calls "forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old"--you cannot get to anarchy by means of the state. I could choose to segregate my beliefs from my actions, but I choose not to do that. My whole reason for increasing my practice of meditation, and for treating the epilepsy, is to better myself. The better I am, the better I am to help others. I'm also getting out of my isolation by being out and about with people, discussing ideas, changing minds. If you can explain to me how voting Democrat or voting Republican leads to no more Democrats, no more Republicans, then I am all ears. As far as I can tell, though, participation in the system only continues it...
I should also point out that I think participation in this corrupt edifice is a humiliating and demoralizing effort. Why anyone would want to go through that is a mystery to me. Better to be positive and outside than negative and inside.
Sorry to quote you Eumaas but I haven't been able to get this out of my mind.
It might be due partially to watching the movie Recount last night but I'm sickened by the whole thing and don't want to vote. That anyone would vote for Bush once, let alone twice, is stupidity to the extreme. Even if the counts were wrong in Florida 8 years ago, that they were close enough then for it to be an issue is enough to frustrate. Then it was close 4 years later, but he got reelected. Pathetic, regardless of whom he was running against. Now it seems it will be close again, thanks largely to McCain injecting Bush-like idiocy into his campaign by picking Palin to run with. It makes me want to puke. Who are these people? Shit, maybe we should embrace the two party system and let it split the U.S. at the seams. If the Dems had any balls it might actually work.
