Shattered Crystalline Matrix

Mandela moment? Nope, sorry to disappoint you. The 2008 US Elections may well be the most significant elections yet… but the fact remains that it just doesn't matter who warms the President's chair in the White House. Bush's 8 years in office have certainly not been America's finest hour; but would things really have been different if the Democrats won the elections? Well, in fact, they might have been; but the problem here is that the framing is all wrong. The President is just the tail of the dog, and the dog does the wagging, not the tail. The problems currently facing the USA come from the ground up, and not the top down.

The "Mandela moment" in South Africa was not important because of Nelson Mandela. This does not diminish Mandela's contribution to the country's renaissance in any way, but the fact remains that Mandela is largely symbolic of the turning of an era, a widespread socio-political change that, once again, came from the ground up. Mandela was merely the acrobat at the top of the pyramid.

The Obama campaign may have focused on the "real issues" far more than McCain's platform; unfortunately, in many cases, there is just lip service and handwaving as to how these issues are to be addressed, but really, that's just how the political game is played. Either way, it just doesn't matter in the end; regardless of how badly Obama wants to make things change, he just doesn't have that kind of power. He's going wherever the base of the pyramid takes him, and that's all there is to it. The irony is that he will most likely be remembered for how well or how badly the USA weathers the coming economic storm, but it's unlikely his efforts will have much influence on the situation one way or another.

Still, couldn't Obama be representative of the changing situation on the ground? In order for that to be true, his victory would have to stem somehow from that change, but the reality is that Obama won the election primarily through votes from those who would not have otherwise voted. There's no sudden change of heart here, just the relentless progression of time, as the newer generation replaces the older generation; a process that has been well underway for a long time now. The fact that he managed to rope in new voters is, perhaps, interesting in and of itself, but isn't likely to have any influence beyond the sphere of electioneering.

tags:

• economics
• politics
• quote

No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press. — Amartya Sen, by way of JP

tags:

• voting
• politics
• democracy

This post is mainly a reaction to commentry on a post by Colin, as well as a parting shot delivered by Gavin.

I choose not to vote. This decision is something I’ve had many years to think about, not just a product of a flippant don’t-care-whatever attitude, which is why I’m actually bothering to blog about it. There are three main reasons behind this decision:

Firstly, who on earth is there to vote for? The ANC already have the majority of the vote; they might not be doing a particularly bad job, but I can hardly say I want to actually *support* them either. The DA’s platform is based around blindly opposing the ANC no matter what the issue at hand is, and making promises about service delivery that are even more absurd and unkeepable than the ANC’s. The ID are great at posturing too, but they don’t seem capable of doing anything more than running around barking. And the rest have insignificant support, and nothing particularly interesting either; half of them seem to be pushing some religious or racialist agenda that I want absolutely nothing to do with anyway. I’ll also note here that while I do not have any ability to vote in elections not occurring in South Africa, I have yet to see any country that is particularly different in this regard; the party names and particular details change, but the end result is still more-or-less the same.

Secondly, yes, I am not a supporter of “democracy”. Actually, South Africa (like everywhere else that claims “democracy”) has a system more along the lines of “representative democracy”, where you only make one democratic decision every N years. “Democracy” should more correctly refer to a system where all government decisions (or all major ones, anyway) involve a universal democratic voting process. Of course, the logistics of such a system already make it infeasible — but more importantly, for most matters, the majority of people would be completely unqualified to make any decisions one way or the other, so the result would likely be an even worse disaster. Semantic quibbling aside, I consider this kind of “democracy” (henceforth used without scare quotes) to be one of the greatest evils in the world today (due to its prevelancy, not magnitude); by voting, I am giving legitimacy to it, and becoming part of the problem. Contrary to popular opinion, voting is not the only way to go about affecting political change; it is not even the most effective way to do it.

Thirdly, my vote doesn’t count. That’s right, it doesn’t count. Neither does yours. Neither does any other individual’s vote. A single vote out of thousands or millions is simply not empowered to have any meaningful effect on the outcome. The units that *are* empowered to have such an effect are the larger groups in play; the larger a group, the more empowered it is to affect the outcome. This is the grim reality of democracy. The odds of a deadlock that only my vote will break occurring are infinitesmal; you’d have better luck winning enough money on the lottery to buy the vote out.

Ingrid asserts that government is suppose to be expressing *you*; and that’s a great fantasy. In reality, however, a democratically elected government can only express one group of people, even theoretically. In theory, they are meant to express the largest group; in practice, they claim to express all sorts of things, but ultimately express only their own desires and human flaws. This should come as no surprise, either: I’m not a perfect being, and slapping some political title in front of my name is not going to change that; why would it be different for any other human being?

With these factors in mind, I choose abstention as my participation in the “democratic process”. I would encourage other individuals to do the same; if enough people abstain from the vote, the illegitimacy of the democratic farce would be revealed for all to see. Of course, that’s not actually going to happen, because the group with the greatest voting power is also the least likely to vote intelligently, and no amount of voting by intelligent and/or educated people is going to change this.

This isn’t about shouting unvaluable comments from the peanut gallery; I provide commentary where I believe my words may have an effect by empowering others to make better-informed decisions about their actions.