Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Sep. 16 2008,17:02) | Nerull subtract your vote from the total to get a round idea of how worthless and irrelevant your input is. That is true even assuming the manifestly false notion that there is a connection between the actions of a politician (especially at the presidential level, and I am open to the consideration that local politics could possibly operate under different dynamics). The last 8 years have been replete with douchebaggery and fucktardation. So were the previous 8. The most concise summation of this phenomenon is "They are all a gang of shit-asses".
Louis says all have sinned and come short of the glory of god, whether you believe in sin or god or not. Fundie logic false dichotomies. Do folks less than 18 years old have the 'right' to complain? Did blacks or women have the 'right' to complain before they were granted suffrage? It's all bullshit.
I tend to agree with Heddle here, I think, albeit, obliquely. The best thing that could possibly come out of participating in the voting process is the social reinforcement of personal identity. Perhaps that wasn't his point. Anyway, it makes you feel good and warm and fuzzy like you are contributing and for some folks that is enough. Clearly. Don't worry about the rest of that stuff, just like "Love Jesus", "Cast Your Vote" is a matter of blind faith in a black box of secret machinations. I remain bewildered at the level of blind child like faith that the social prometheans, such as Louis, put in political processes when so much hay is made of ridiculing that same apparatus in the minds of god-believers.
Louis, the word you are looking for starts with an "O", not an "H". I think we would both agree that martyrdom is a rather stupid choice, don't you? If, not, go crucify yourself for the Labour Party and see if anyone gives a flying rat's cunt. |
Sorry but how does any of that address or resemble anything I said? Your straw men will avail you nothing, you should know I have no sympathy for them.
I explicitly DON'T think we have all sinned and fallen short of perfection and glory. Recognising that we are all flawed human beings capable of error is hardly the same as sin. One is a rational assessment of one's own limitations, the other is some religious idea which is basically a means of exercising political and psychological control. I think perfection and glory are unattainable nonsense. I think we can strive towards improvement, nothing more. Is a simple acknowledgement that you are fallible beyond your fragile ego?
Sadly, no, in the days of disenfranchisement, blacks and women did not have the right to complain. That is a travesty, something that has been pleasingly corrected to some degree. Let's hope it improves MORE. Sadly now, underage kids are deemed incapable of giving reasoned votes, they are explicitly disenfranchised by their (assumed) lack of reasoning ability. The rights and wrongs of that are a separate debate.
And as usual you misunderstand me, just as you misunderstood Lou. I place no faith in the mechanism of voting. I know that the value of my individual vote is infinitesimally small (if even non-zero). I am explicitly not saying "vote at all costs" or "act according to the status quo at all costs" I am saying "ENGAGE". Very different things, no faith required. Starting a revolution and tearing down the current society IS engagement. It's even engagement that I would probably support and engage in myself. (Bit of a fan of Che Guevara, not all his acts or ideas, but some of them certainly)
My points are very simple:
a) we have a political process in our society,
b) we have a system of government for that society,
c) neither the political process or system of government are (or possibly can be) perfect,
d) that government/process are corrupted in some fashion, or at least corruptible, by various vested interests (this is a natural consequence of our biology as much as anything else),
e) ignoring that government/process is a very difficult (if not impossible) option in today's world, the reach of states and corporations is enormous (whether or not I like that),
f) The only way to change this process or government is to engage (interact) with it in some fashion.
Please point out the faith based elements of the above. I have zero faith in our current political systems and governments, and by "our" I mean every different one across the globe, not merely UK/USA. What I do have some reasonable basis for thinking is that these things are mutable, i.e. they are not fixed entities, based on the evidence available to me. I'm exceptionally open to any evidence demonstrating that governments, political systems or what have you are immutable and unchanging, please provide some if this is your contention.The entire antithesis of faith you'll note.
The US (or any) government as it is now, and the political process that shapes it, have not existed since the dawn of time, carved in tablets of stone by some mythical deity. It is an evolved and evolving system. That means it can be interacted with and altered. That alteration might be as simple as voting (if one must reduce it to that) or as radical as destroying it. I make no claims about what is the best action, I simply don't know. My point is very simply that to affect the political process and government of any society one must engage with it in some fashion. That is such a trivially and obviously true point that I cannot believe the extremes of stupidity you are going to to avoid it.
The argument I had with Heddle and others is that if one is going to engage in the political process at all, doing so in an unreasoned manner opens one up to rampant exploitation. If you agree with Heddle you are defeating your own point about engagement being worthless. I agree they (politicians) ARE all shits, and that governments are pretty much all corrupt in some fashion and that the 8 years before the last 8 years before the last 8 years etc were all pretty shitty) but that situation can only be changed by rational, informed engagement. If your choice of rational, informed engagement is voting then do so on the issues, don't play identity politics and be exploited. If your choice of rational, informed engagement is to overthrow what you perceive as a tyrannical oligarchy then do so, but make sure you a) know where the enemy really is and b) have something to replace it with (even if it's only anarchy, which I can demonstrate to you will not work, sadly. Basic game theory alone demonstrates the advantages of limited cooperation, hence anarchy [like utopian perfection] isn't actually possible, varying degrees are.)
As for crucifying myself for Labour? Why on earth would I waste my time of that bunch of authoritarian hypocrites? Don't you get it yet 'Ras? I'm apolitical, I belong to no party and have no allegiance. I follow the evidence and take the time to find out about the things I care about. The problem I have is that absolutely no one represents me at all. I usually vote for whoever is going to increase science funding and move certain social things in certain directions, and I by no means always vote. Abstaining is a choice after all, although I think in the current climate it is a luxury we can ill afford. Look at the last line of my previous posts. I want a world in which voting is unnecessary, in which apathy can reign supreme, because that'll mean we got something right.
Last but not least 'Ras, if you persist in acting like Skeptic by chucking around straw men, not reading what people actually write and instead dreaming up little enemies of your own to fight with, I'll treat you like Skeptic. Got that? And further to that, if you're going to accuse me of logical fallacies etc be so good as to point them out and correct them, as opposed to doing what you are currently doing which is pulling things out of your arse.
Louis
EDITED FOR UNCLARITY AND NONCONTENT.
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Bye.
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