Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 17, 2011 at 10:26pm

But wouldn't punishing the 1% for bad behavior be a radical solution? 

In order to ensure that the 1% would be punished for bad behavior, we'd have to change the whole system so that they couldn't buy and control it. We couldn't just delegate justice to elected or appointed judges, because we've learned that they are easily corrupted. If we really wanted things to be done right, we'd have to (horrors!) do them ourselves.

Is it that important to us? 

If millions of people demonstrated for something, the government would beat and arrest as many of them as possible and then budget a few more billions of dollars for Homeland Security so that it would be easier to control even larger numbers of protesters the next time. The US government is very clear about not allowing public opinion to influence policy decisions, so even if every citizen in the country took to the streets, the government would eventually suppress the dissent and continue to do whatever the 1% wanted done.

The US government has killed millions of people to suppress democratic uprisings elsewhere, and I have no doubt that it would do the same thing here if necessary.

But what if millions of Americans stopped voting? Who could the cops pepper-spray, beat, or arrest? The government loses credibility, loses the consent of the governed, and there is nobody for the cops to brutalize. Are they going to go house to house asking each person whether or not they voted? How many cops, sheriffs, and US military troops would be willing to bust people's doors down to find out if they voted?

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Permalink Reply by Gisele Theriault on December 17, 2011 at 10:54pm

Why should the government care if we stay home? As long as the tax money still flows and walmart still opens it doors it's still business as usual. I suppose campaigning could be done away with, maybe even elections. After all, if people don't want to vote why force them? They could just annouce how expensive elections are and have a 10 year moratorium.

They're not going to be like "oh shoot, we don't have the consent of the governed, oh well, guess we better turn out the lights on our way out." The government will just continue as is.

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 17, 2011 at 11:22pm

Well, there was an election boycott in South Africa back during the Apartheid regime. Of course the government didn't care if people didn't vote. The tax money still flowed, the diamond mines still operated, and it was business as usual. They could have just done away with elections entirely.

But because Apartheid was such a nasty system, the South African government had been losing allies. Other countries didn't want to be seen as supporting Apartheid. So about the only two allies South Africa had left were Israel and the United States. Israel saw nothing wrong with Apartheid and continued to support it. But the United States had been claiming to dislike Apartheid and claiming that the only reason it continued to support such an undemocratic system was because the Apartheid regime was the legitimate government of South Africa, and those who opposed Apartheid were rebels and terrorists and revolutionaries.

After the election boycott, when only 7% of eligible voters cast ballots (blacks weren't allowed to vote so they didn't count), the government ignored it and tried to carry on business as usual. They installed the new elected officials in office even if they'd only gotten a handful of votes. But the global opponents of Apartheid, particularly those in the United States, pointed out that the Apartheid government no longer had the consent of the governed, was no longer a legitimate government, and the US had no further excuse to support it. The US was forced to withdraw its support for the Apartheid regime. Once that happened, the Apartheid regime, finding itself with no other ally but Israel, a self-described small and endangered country, began making concessions, political prisoners like Nelson Mandela were released, and the 1% quickly moved as much of their wealth as they could elsewhere.

Things didn't improve radically in South Africa because the new government wasn't really revolutionary in the sense of nationalizing resources and ousting the oligarchy, in fact it didn't even punish those who were willing to confess to and apologize for their atrocities. But the Apartheid regime was formally ended.

The United States has few allies in the world. Many are bound by economic ties, but some, like England, Canada, Australia, etc., are also linked politically and pretend to be democratically elected governments themselves. If the US is shown to lack the support of the governed, they will have no further excuse to sent troops to help in US wars of aggression. They might try, but it would be obvious to everyone that they were supporting an illegitimate government, that they didn't care if the US had the consent of its governed or not. And their own people might wonder if their government would also continue to operate without their consent. 

Other governments would reassess their relationship with the US. Global creditors would shudder and say that since the US no longer had the consent of the governed, it meant that the majority, those who hadn't voted, no longer supported the US government. A government without the consent of the governed is not stable and creditors like stability. The US could, and probably would, continue to rule as a military dictatorship, but military dictatorships aren't considered as stable and creditworthy as democratically elected governments either. The US global credit rating would drop and creditors would start calling in their loans.

The government can only continue as it is if we consent to allow it to continue as it is. If we don't consent and don't vote, many things will change. We may not be ready for change and we may not be able to predict what those changes might be, but things would change. It is only if we continue to grant our consent, that things will continue as they are.

Almost half of all people in the US are living in poverty right now. That wouldn't continue the same way as it is now if people continue to vote, because government policies have been making it worse and worse and it would continue to get worse. If we don't continue to vote, we don't know if things would get worse anyway or if they might get better, but we would be inviting change. Right now only half of us are open to change--the other half are still doing fine. Funny thing, though--some of those who are still doing fine have been involved in Occupy. So even though they're still doing fine, they must have a sense that all is not entirely well and that the Occupy List of Grievances isn't something that has nothing to do with them.

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Permalink Reply by Gisele Theriault on December 17, 2011 at 11:55pm

Bush committed war crimes but not a single country will touch him. Obama is assasinating people and no one says a word. The US has military bases everywhere. When the economic collapse happened people put their money in the US dollar. How's that for ironic.

The US was not forced to stop dealing with South Africa. The US chose to stop because it was politically cheap to do. When it's convenient to deal with brutal dictatorships the US continues to do so, even sells them arms with which to suppress their populations. That doesn't bother anyone. Everyone knew the invasion of Iraq was bogus. England joined right in.

The United States is not South Africa and even there Apartheid ended but the government remained the same. China is the big upcoming consumer market and I doubt they would have a problem with US citizens choosing not to vote.

Given all the autrocities the US has committed that are being ignored I don't see why a little thing like citizens not voting would change a thing. It would probably be spun that people are so satisfied they can't be bothered to vote.

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 18, 2011 at 2:56am

In reality, the US has made a lot of enemies, Gisele. And even if many of them are powerless to resist US military and economic might, they don't like what the US has been doing.

When WWII ended, Nazi Germany was in ruins and the US stepped in with a Marshall Plan to help them. When the US empire falls, China isn't going to offer a Marshall Plan to bail us out, they'll just use us as a source of even cheaper labor than they have at home. England, Canada, and Germany have been so stretched trying to bail out other countries that US economic policies have bankrupted, that they're not likely to have the money to bail out the US even if they want to.

US atrocities are being ignored in the US, and perhaps by those US allies who have aided and abetted in those atrocities, but they have never been ignored by the countries who have been victims of those atrocities, their neighbors, and by people everywhere who care about people instead of only about profits.

As long as the Apartheid regime was able to claim to be the legitimate government of South Africa, the US continued to deal with it. It only became politically cheaperer to stop dealing with it after the election boycott when it could no longer claim the consent of the governed.

That's why the US sent TWENTY-ONE TONS of tear gas to the Egyptian military in the week before the election that the US needed in order to justify continuing to support a brutal military dictatorship. A gas is very light, Gisele. A tear gas canister capable of dispersing a large group of people only weighs a few ounces. TWENTY-ONE TONS of tear gas were needed to suppress the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square who were advocating an election boycott, and ensure that people voted.

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 18, 2011 at 3:00am

Is that true that they were advocating an election boycott? I didn't know that.

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 18, 2011 at 3:16am

Many were, Victoria. I posted some links towards the beginning of this discussion but you can find many of them in one place in this topic on my little website:

Egyptians Resist US Attempt to Impose Sham Election

http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1224

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 18, 2011 at 4:42am

Victoria, you might also want to look closely at this:

Egypt: #OccupyCabinet by Philip Rizk

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/rizk171211.html

Posted yesterday, it has videos of the recent violence by the government against Tahrir and includes this statement:

Thank you, world, for believing in our "democratic transition."  This is why we don't go to vote.  The generals overseeing this massacre oversee our elections.

I think even the top political tag-teams in the US would have to admit that there's a certain logic to that statement.  ;)

I'm not good at embedding videos, so I'm going to ask my techie co-admin to add that article to my Fubar topic.

Permalink Reply by Gisele Theriault on December 18, 2011 at 1:02pm

This is Egypt's first election. Egypt is still in the process of revolution. This is not a peaceful situation where people just decided to stay home and not vote. Tahir square was and is filled with active protesters risking their lives calling for a boycott. The protesters failed to stop people from voting. There was an excellent turn-out for the election. The world is still perfectly content letting the military rule indefinitely as long as they guard the pipelines to Israel and cooperate with the US.

Of course leaders are condemning the military crack-down on protests but it's just for show. I don't see the US withdrawing aid or refusing to send weaponry.Leaders just all look terribly solemn as they condemn crackdowns in the firmest tones possible while they ship tear-gas and other crowd-control weaponry.

Not voting will do nothing to stop US military power. The US has more military power than the rest of the world combined. The world isn't isolating Egypt and Egypt has much less power. The second Mubarak was gone the world was celebrating and ready for Egypt to go back to business as usual. The best outcome for world powers is if the military continues to control Egypt.

Why would they isolate the States just because people didn't bother voting? Lots of countries don't have leadership legitimized by the citizens and they don't have the power to blow-up the world. It would be wonderful if just not-voting while creating a socially responsible alternative was the answer to disempowering the ruling-class. I don't think it is going to be anywhere near that easy.

The key is labour. When people stop working that's a problem because that is what generates the wealth of the ruling-class. That's what throws them into a panic. That is what we have to hold over their heads. What they hold over our heads is money. We need money to buy food and pay for shelter. The system is too complex to suddenly do without it, but we don't have to.

Regular massive strikes is enough to disrupt the economy and force a response. Get even 50% of workers to not work for a day and it would put the ruling-class into shock.

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 18, 2011 at 1:31pm

It is difficult for workers to not work, Gisele. They don't get paid and that means they can't pay rent and feed their children.

But if people really opposed the 1% and wanted a better world, they could stop voting with no effort and no penalty.

If they won't do something easy that costs them nothing, why would they do something difficult?

The US has a long history of labor struggles and the government always won, often by killing the striking workers and their families.

And election boycott has never been tried, so what prophetic vision told you that it can't work? It has worked in other places and it might work here if people cared enough to try.

The election that Obama and Hillary proposed for Egypt and sent weapons to secure, was a success only because the US-backed junta killed a lot of people who were advocating an election boycott. If elections aren't important, why did the US spend millions of dollars sending the Egyptian military junta tons of crowd control weapons in the week before the election to terrify people into voting?

There is nothing revolutionary about elections and that's why the Egyptian revolutionaries wanted an election boycott.

You either trust and support the system and vote to delegate your power to the system, or you oppose the system and engage in noncompliance. The easiest form of noncompliance, and the only one that has ever nonviolently delegitimized governments, is an election boycott. 

I don't care if you grow organic food, bank with a credit union, and carry signs at protests, if you do your civic duty to the system you are NOT opposing the system, just trying to find ways to work within the system in hopes that the system which is killing so many other people might not get around to killing you for a little while.

If you ask people to do difficult things but won't ask them to do easy things, you're making it more difficult for people to do anything.

If you ask people to do things which have not proven effective in past, but won't ask them to things which have proven effective, you probably don't want them to be effective.

If a protest fails, people get beaten and arrested.

If a workers' strike fails, people can lose their jobs.

But if an election boycott fails, nobody loses anything, things just continue as they are. 

If an election boycott wasn't the most dangerous threat to the status quo, this wouldn't be the longest thread on Occupy Cafe or BradBlog, and I wouldn't have been banned from so many websites for mentioning it. People don't waste their time responding to something they disagree with if they don't think it is a serious threat.

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 18, 2011 at 2:10pm

Mark -- two things. You say labor struggles have never worked, but we know that isn't true. However, the gains, as we see, can be easily rolled back later.

And I think the threat people see in your proposal, on places like Brad Blog, is sort of the opposite of what you're saying here. The threat those people see is to the overall movement for a better world which they believe can only happen through reforming the current system, by getting decent people into office. So they see you as a threat because they want to go exactly in the opposite direction you are advocating.

I think you will likely never convince them fully otherwise, but I think when you make your arguments without any negative energy associated, you are incredibly persuasive and extremely articulate, and you give people a lot to consider. They will be more inclined to thank you for all your long consideration of the problem and your capacity to speak about it, than to drive you off like a plague. 

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 18, 2011 at 2:42pm

And I think the threat people see in your proposal, on places like Brad Blog, is sort of the opposite of what you're saying here. The threat those people see is to the overall movement for a better world which they believe can only happen through reforming the current system, by getting decent people into office. So they see you as a threat because they want to go exactly in the opposite direction you are advocating.

The threat they react so vehemently to is that in my election boycott advocacy I point out that reforms are temporary at best and, as you say, can be reversed at any time or rolled back by whichever administration the 1% puts in power, and that getting decent people in office doesn't have the slightest possibility of breaking the iron lock that the 1% have on our government within our lifetimes or several lifetimes.

Some of us would like change more immediately. What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! 

They also see me as a threat because I point out that they know that our election system isn't secure and that voting in an insecure electoral system isn't likely to bring about change.

They know that the game is rigged and that it is impossible for people to win in a rigged game. They get upset because while they like to tell people exactly how the game is rigged, they don't want people to stop gambling in the rigged game because if people stopped gambling in the rigged game, a blog that tells people that the game is rigged would be obsolete.

When the Democrats didn't succeed in silencing election integrity activists by calling us conspiracy theorists, and the truth came out that the game was rigged in ways that they couldn't deny, their next challenge in getting out the vote was how to convince people to keep voting in a rigged system. They've been very successful, but I'm a threat to their continuing success because I warn people that you can't win when the system is rigged.

I want a better world, so I try to look for effective ways to bring about a better world. People who are happy with the status quo, not only don't want effective ways to bring about a better world, they want everyone to keep using ways that aren't effective and don't work.

They don't really believe that voting in rigged elections can get enough decent people elected to break the 1%'s stranglehold on US government and bring about a better world. At least not in our lifetimes. And Brad does a green blog, so he knows about global warming and pollution and that we can't just wait around a few more lifetimes to achieve a better world because there isn't likely to be any world left, at least not one suitable for human habitation.

Brad admits that we have "faith-based elections," and he has a right to believe in any faith he chooses. He also has the right to proselytize for his faith. I'm a threat because I agree with him (and you) that elections shouldn't be a matter of faith, and I advise people not to vote in faith-based elections. That's heresy or blasphemy to a true believer.

It so happens that there is no Santa Claus and there is no tooth fairy. But if parents have invested a lot of time and effort into getting their kids to believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, and I come along and tell the kids that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy, the parents are going to be very angry with me. It doesn't mean that Santa Claus or the tooth fairy exist, just that they see some advantage in having their kids believe something that isn't true.

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