geardrops [blog]

Today there were primaries in California. All both of them.

I didn’t vote, but that’s not due to any social irresponsibility on my part. I’ve mentioned before why I hate politics. Years ago, I read a speech that changed my life: Washington’s Farewell Address (yes, I’m linking the vernacular version - you’ll thank me later). It outlined a good deal of things that I felt, the most important important of which was:

Let me now … warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

Translation: All parties suck.

…

This spirit [of uniting as a group against another group], unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

Translation: People like to get in groups to hate other groups. It’s what we do. And it really, really sucks.

…

The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Translation: All party leaders are power-hungry jerks. And they suck.

- George Washington, 1796

It’s not that deep into the speech. Just look up the word “parties” (either version) and read that section. Political parties are going to ruin us. They are ruining us. And I refuse to join up with something that is destroying a wonderful system of government. It’s converting the vote into a coin-flip. People who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or the other way around, feel caught in a bind. Sure they would like their vote to go to the Libertarians/Green/Socialist/Reform/Etc. But they want their vote to count.

I think if more people realized that 5% of the base vote can get a party federal funding in the next election they’d be more inclined. But these are the same people who can’t balance their sodding checkbooks.

Tags: 2008 election, election, primaries, voting   Posted Politics |