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Nov. 6th, 2012 08:26 am( Русский язык )
Ah yes, Election Day. The day in which I hide away from everything social media and news related on the internet for the most part, barring a few glances at news sites to scan over headlines and ignore anything related to elections. I vote early almost entirely because when Election Day comes, I don't want to have to swing wildly back and forth between ... well, these days it's pretty much between "yay, that fucker will never hold high political office!" and "Oh crap, we're screwed." Warren Ellis best sums up my attitude towards voting in Transmetropolitan. I just wish my copies weren't packed.
But Jag, you may ask. Why are you all up in arms about preserving democracy if you hate elections and voting? Or you may not, because you know me well enough to know why, but for those of you just joining us, I'm a cynical bitch when it comes to human beings on a large scale. We're not smarter than anything else on the planet. We can be dumb, dangerous, panicky animals as much as the next creature. We just invent more complex ways of being stupid and panicking. Like systems of government. On the other hand, as far as I can tell having studied various texts and manifestations of politics and philosophy throughout hysteria, er, history, a democracy in which everyone casts a vote and everyone gets a say in who runs what (and since consensus is pretty much logarithmically more difficult in any group larger than, say, two or three) is about the best option. You could make an argument for inherited rule, be it monarchy or however, because then you have someone raised to be responsible and know the duties and expectations of leadership, but then you still get a crapshoot that the next person in line is both physically and temperamentally suited to be responsible for X number of people. And that's just a little too risky for me. Technically we're not even a true democracy, we're... what, a democratic republic? The specific form of democracy doesn't matter too much to me at the moment, if someone explained it in more depth I might have an opinion. But everyone gets to cast their vote, and in theory, we get to pick from the options available to us (don't get me started on two-party system) as to who we want to run the country for the next four years. And at the end of those four years, someone else gets a turn.
I like democracy. I like how no one gets to run the country for any length of time, I like how the running of this country is split between people who preserve a theoretically fair system of laws, people who do the administrative, and people who poke the laws and taxes to make them more fair. I like how there's some consistency to things because laws and because people's terms run out at different times, so you have people who have been here for a couple of years and people who are just getting in. I like how everyone gets a fair say. I'm one of those I may think you're an uneducated bigoted jackhole but I will defend to the death your right to have your uneducated bigoted jackhole opinions type people. As to where having opinions stops and shoving those opinions in people's faces until they do themselves or someone else harm, well, that's a troubling gray area for me, but generally, opinions and arseholes.
Anyway. Oh for fucksake, now the boy's either arguing with his parents on the phone about Romney, or arguing with his brother via his parents about Romney. His brother's too damned poor to vote for Romney. Then again, so is everyone in my family and the boy's except for maybe my Grandpa.
Better things! Today, if work isn't busy, Nano and then Yuletide and then J3 and then other fic as it occurs to me, which will probably be that Bane Wayne AU thing. My brain is a strange, strange place. Waiting on a phone call from the contractor to let me know when he can meet, I feel like we're scheduling some clandestine government secret handoff. Heee. And, you know. Things and stuff.
Ah yes, Election Day. The day in which I hide away from everything social media and news related on the internet for the most part, barring a few glances at news sites to scan over headlines and ignore anything related to elections. I vote early almost entirely because when Election Day comes, I don't want to have to swing wildly back and forth between ... well, these days it's pretty much between "yay, that fucker will never hold high political office!" and "Oh crap, we're screwed." Warren Ellis best sums up my attitude towards voting in Transmetropolitan. I just wish my copies weren't packed.
But Jag, you may ask. Why are you all up in arms about preserving democracy if you hate elections and voting? Or you may not, because you know me well enough to know why, but for those of you just joining us, I'm a cynical bitch when it comes to human beings on a large scale. We're not smarter than anything else on the planet. We can be dumb, dangerous, panicky animals as much as the next creature. We just invent more complex ways of being stupid and panicking. Like systems of government. On the other hand, as far as I can tell having studied various texts and manifestations of politics and philosophy throughout hysteria, er, history, a democracy in which everyone casts a vote and everyone gets a say in who runs what (and since consensus is pretty much logarithmically more difficult in any group larger than, say, two or three) is about the best option. You could make an argument for inherited rule, be it monarchy or however, because then you have someone raised to be responsible and know the duties and expectations of leadership, but then you still get a crapshoot that the next person in line is both physically and temperamentally suited to be responsible for X number of people. And that's just a little too risky for me. Technically we're not even a true democracy, we're... what, a democratic republic? The specific form of democracy doesn't matter too much to me at the moment, if someone explained it in more depth I might have an opinion. But everyone gets to cast their vote, and in theory, we get to pick from the options available to us (don't get me started on two-party system) as to who we want to run the country for the next four years. And at the end of those four years, someone else gets a turn.
I like democracy. I like how no one gets to run the country for any length of time, I like how the running of this country is split between people who preserve a theoretically fair system of laws, people who do the administrative, and people who poke the laws and taxes to make them more fair. I like how there's some consistency to things because laws and because people's terms run out at different times, so you have people who have been here for a couple of years and people who are just getting in. I like how everyone gets a fair say. I'm one of those I may think you're an uneducated bigoted jackhole but I will defend to the death your right to have your uneducated bigoted jackhole opinions type people. As to where having opinions stops and shoving those opinions in people's faces until they do themselves or someone else harm, well, that's a troubling gray area for me, but generally, opinions and arseholes.
Anyway. Oh for fucksake, now the boy's either arguing with his parents on the phone about Romney, or arguing with his brother via his parents about Romney. His brother's too damned poor to vote for Romney. Then again, so is everyone in my family and the boy's except for maybe my Grandpa.
Better things! Today, if work isn't busy, Nano and then Yuletide and then J3 and then other fic as it occurs to me, which will probably be that Bane Wayne AU thing. My brain is a strange, strange place. Waiting on a phone call from the contractor to let me know when he can meet, I feel like we're scheduling some clandestine government secret handoff. Heee. And, you know. Things and stuff.