From RT:
Note: This poll is NOT scientific. But funny still.
Who would you vote for in the US Presidential Election:
16% : Democratic incumbent Barack Obama all the way
11% : Republican challenger Mitt Romney to get America back on track
19% : Any of the third party candidates, left or right
54% : No one! The system is rigged and the election is meaningless
Let’s face it: all we can really do is laugh at this point.
James Tuttle at C4SS ponders why this is.
I often think of those two quotes, especially when people ask why there are so few women anarchists and libertarians. The recent anarchist survey came back with 82% of the respondents being men. Libertarian surveys also have lopsided results.
Why?
From CNN:
Obama has already authorized 283 strikes in Pakistan, six times more than the number during President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, Bergen wrote earlier this month. As a result, the number of estimated deaths from the Obama administration’s drone strikes is more than four times what it was during the Bush administration — somewhere between 1,494 and 2,618.
From RT:
On Thursday, legal documents intended to be cloaked indefinitely were accidently unsealed in US District Court in Seattle for a moment, finally offering a small bit of insight as to why the FBI has been targeting adherents to a specific ideology and intensifying what some have equated to a politically-motivated witch-hunt aimed at anarchists.
The Seattle Times reports that an affidavit dated October 3 was momentarily made available during last week’s court proceedings, revealing to those in attendance that the investigation into Plante and her peers dates back to earlier this year when the FBI first began spying on a group of suspected anarchists they believed were conspiring to commit acts of violence and destruction.
The third presidential debate is over. The air has been filled with mindless drivel. But the so-called election continues. Tomorrow, and for a few more days, the talking heads will also tell us what to think. They will continue to sprout the pseudo-gospel of politics, the lie that we have a choice, a voice in what happens in this country.
But that is a lie. We have no such choice. We have the illusion of choice. Our voice is muted cronies and the lobbyists and the corporate interests. They own the government. And the government owns us. Freedom be damned.
In November, the election will be over. Or should I say THIS election will be over. For a few weeks after this election, the talking heads will once again tell us what this outcome means for this country. The corporate media will go into its spin. If Obama wins, MSNBC will continue to paint him as the messiah, while Fox will treat him as the Anti-Christ. If Romney wins, fox will treat him as the messiah and MSNBC will come two steps short of calling him the spawn of Satan. Despite the fact that these two ‘candidates’ offer the same policies—more drone strikes, less freedom, more debt, etc.
Then the spin will continue. The talking heads will debate about the mid-term elections. Who will take the Senate? What about the House? The media will again pretend we have choice. There is no choice. There can be no choice. The very system itself doesn’t work. The system is anti-choice. That is the very foundation of the system. The system I refer to, of course, is the demonic entity of the state.
The state can only exist through force, coercion and theft. That is it. There is no choice in that. If you want democracy, abolish the state. The market, the thing of spontaneous order where voluntary actions—choices—move society. A stateless society, one of voluntary choice. That is true democracy. That is freedom. That is choice. All things in society will be allocated by voluntary action, by individual choice. But that can only happen when the state is out of the picture—completely
I didn’t watch the debate. I didn’t see much point in it. If I had watched it, I probably would have felt about twenty percent dumber.
As far a voting goes, I’m not really opposed to it if it’s going to help spread the message of liberty. Some people don’t share my opinion, and that’s perfectly fine. I can completely respect that opinion. I, and I’m sure many other people, came to anarchism after first becoming a minarchist libertarian. So if voting for someone is going to eventually spread the eventually spread the message of anti-statism, then I don’t see anything wrong with it.
But voting just for the hell of it doesn’t make any sense, especially when the choice is between Goldman Sachs 1 and Goldman Sachs 2.
But what really irks me is when statist left-wingers say that the corporations own the government (which, of course, they do) and then propose that the government should be given more power, as if that would lead to some sort of propitious outcome. There is apparently some belief that our wise, benevolent overlords will break free from their corporate chains and our masters will wave their magic wands and fix everything that’s wrong with America.
Then there are the people that call non-voters ‘apathetic.’ But is it really apathy to not vote when the choice is between to corporatist stooges? I call it common sense. To me blindly believing in the message of a politician, who is no different from his predecessor, while blaming his failures on the previous administration is much worse than ‘apathy’; it is a rejection of reason.
But I guess you can have it your way. If you want to call me ‘apathetic’ for refusing to choose between two government stooges to take away my freedom, then go ahead. I’ll just call you stupid.