Reflections on Elections

(Or why I won’t be voting)

A ‘General Election’.

Looks similar to ‘Venereal Infection’, doesn’t it?

And the comparison doesn’t end there.

Hasn’t every voter, at one time felt dirty and stupid for having given their consent to someone who knowingly and recklessly put them at risk?

Shafted them.

My skin crawls as I see the legions of parasites vying for a piece of me.

But a ‘General Election’ is in actuality a ‘rejection’, isn’t it? The party that comes to power will be, after all, the one the nation hates the least.

Unless you are lucky enough to have a decent independent, eyes hover candidate lists like a rogues gallery, discounting individuals based on bad stuff we’re certain they’ll enact. We extract damaging policies like pulling threadworms and tapeworms from each piece of shit before us, until we are left with a shinier, more attractive turd.

An electable shit.

The shit of choice.

But an election should surely be about awesomeness, shouldn’t it? There are around 66 million people in the UK. If we’re intent on playing this game, don’t we deserve the most brilliant mind, the sharpest strategist? The best negotiator?

Imagine if you decided on a date in that way. “Well……Phil has really bad breath but Alex on the other hand, only has mild body odour…..” or “Paul is racist, yeah..…. but not as racist as Dave.”

Let’s face it, you wouldn’t bother dating, would you?

You’d think If those are my options, know what? I’ll leave it!

So why isn’t that same logic applied to voting?

Because we’ve become so brainwashed to believe we need someone - anyone - ‘in charge’ of us, governing us.

Governing.

Just sit with that word.

What are you…..five???

Do you really believe Rishi, Keir and co to be firm but fair Mary Poppins types who will sort out the country like your untidy bedroom? 

Of course you don’t.

Most people vote, because they fear a worse fate.

There’ll be medicine going down, alright, whether it be figuratively, as we gulp down the non negotiable nasties of greater state control, or literally - as we’re frog marched into another plandemic to the tune of ‘no-one is safe until everyone is safe’, spoken as convincingly as a cockney Dick Van Dyke.

But don’t sweat it.

The spoonfuls of sugar will also be plentiful by means of state benefits (that will increasingly have more strings attached). There may well be furloughs or even a Universal Basic Income.

And it will all taste like fucking cherries or strawberries and keep everyone doped up like penicillin as other, vaster sums of money are whisked away to fund wars, royals or whatever other bollocks politicians deem fit. China will continue to take a big carbon-fizzing dump on Western notions of ‘environmentalism’, whilst you - with your annual holiday, clutching a disintegrating Primark paper bag in the geo-engineered rain - will be guilted into putting your washing machine on lower cycles and forking out for a heat pump.

And if you keep consenting to be governed and upholding this ridiculous charade by voting, you’ll be partly to blame.

Yes, they’ll ‘govern’ anyway.  But the fewer people give their authority to being governed, the less effective it is. We endorse a system of rule every time we participate in it.

During the so-called ‘pandemic’, it felt like lots of people grasped this. We ignored the silly arrows on the ground, and ‘orders’ to stay home. We wilfully defied alleged authority. As ‘right’ and ‘left’ showed themselves as the Uniparty they actually are, many said they’d never vote again. They got it.

But as time went on, resolve began to crumble.

The niggling worry that the party they hated (rather than the one they merely disliked), would triumph, made some people wobble.

Then came the hope of independents and smaller parties, the chance that someone with good intentions might get in.

But what does ‘getting in’ mean, exactly?

It still entails sitting down at a table with a bunch of bullying cronies, to represent you.

YOU with your multitude of complex opinions on everything from education to paper straws, abortion to immigration. Can anyone truly voice your thoughts better than you can, whilst simultaneously purporting to do the same for thousands of others?

Really?

The argument against not voting is always attacked as ‘doing nothing’, but if you don’t believe in the principle of being governed, it makes perfect sense.

When you apply this logic it to other belief systems, this becomes clear. Religion, for example, impinges hugely upon societies. Imagine deciding to be a Christian, not because you believed in it, but on the basis you thought Christianity ‘a bit less extreme’ than Islam.

Declaring yourself a ‘Tactical Christian’ would quite rightly, out you as a massive dick.

Then of course, there is the ‘you have to change a system from within’ argument. *eyeroll*.

It’s ironic that our disposable society, so largely rejecting of ‘make do and mend’, is always keen to take its clumsy, well-meaning needle to a sow’s ear of a political system and naively hope to salvage and silk-purse it.

How much more of our own fraying thread do we waste before we put down the pig, realising it is no more than a distracting bore?

Go crochet a better dream!

People fret that if they don’t vote, anarchy would ensue. ‘Anarchy’ has been dumbed down as a concept, reduced to a dog-eat-dog frenzy. It has an image problem - and I blame punk. But pare it back to basics and ‘anarchy’ simply means ‘no organisation or control because there is no effective government’.

How bad could it be? We already have chaos! A chaos someone else has orchestrated and capitalised from in your name because you gave them your consent via voting!

Say you want ‘Minarchy’ and few have even heard of it, let alone understand its minimalist ‘night watchman’ principles, the state as protector rather than strict enforcer.

So, we have what we have, hey?

Every four years people are encouraged to ‘use’ their vote, as though giving their power away is an honourable thing. Disengagement, will be no doubt, interpreted as apathy.

Hearing people say they are voting makes me come over all ‘birds and bees’.

“Are you sure you respect this person and they respect you ………..you’re not just doing this cause you feel pressured? There may be consequences you haven’t thought of…..”

You know…..

Like World War 3 and shit.

Conscious voting takes a lot of belief.

Belief your preferred candidate is a decent human. Belief they can win and accurately represent you.

AND

Belief they are able to employ that borrowed power to useful ends within the current system or be capable of effecting significant reform.

I just don’t have that belief.

But people gonna do what they’re gonna do.

They’ll fly their flags.

Their red ones, their blue ones.

Like kites in a park, they’ll be giddily swept along, eyes in the sky.

Me?

I’ll be with the old lady hanging with the pigeons.

The free ones, without cages.

The ones they have the nerve to call dumb.

Ears close to the ground, yet when they rise en masse…….how they fly!

That’s more my bag.

And this, has been my tuppence.