Voting
So obviously yesterday was the election, and I don't have much to say about that specifically, but I saw something interesting in how people were reacting to it through the things they were posting online. I see bulletins from the several hundred mostly local folks who are "friends" with my band and my label, and I think that is a fairly representative cross-section of the local counterculture.
Let me preface this by saying I am by no means suggesting that I buy into the hype surrounding Obama. I think there is a fundemental inequality built into the system and there is no one who is going to swoop in and save the system and make democracy work and fix everything. I agree that buying into that myth can be a sort of anesthetic, in that it allows us to believe that selecting leaders who are largely irrelevant to our day-to-day lives is enough. Having spent years of my life either on the streets or in institutions, I know all too well there is no humane way to run a society which treats people like property, or trash in some cases. That said, I won't make the obvious argument against the hordes of white college kid liberals who are frantically absolving themselves of their white guilt through Obama.
However, the anarchist line of "fuck voting, start a revolution" smacks of privilege to me. Primarily because those of us actually living on the poverty line and raising families can't afford to wait for the revolution. If John McCain had been elected, it would have dramatically increased the chance that social programs which I rely on for food and health care for myself and my children would be slashed in favor of more Reaganomics trickle-down shit. There would be more bombs being built with money my kids need for schools, and those bombs would be killing more people I don't know somewhere far away.
It is totally true that those social programs are not a solution to poverty, and it is also true that Obama is not so much anti-war as he's just slightly less pro-war than John McCain. These are compromises and shitty choices to have to make, but they're totally necessary and crucial to myself and many other people who don't live in a bubble of privilege. I find it a little insulting, like the slogan, "Quit your fucking job"; it only sounds good when your parents (or student loans) are paying for everything. If I quit my job, we'd be starving next week.
The other thing that gets ignored is the referendums which also appear on the ballot. These are generally questions of policy which are local and direct and immediately relevant. Fortunately, enough people *did* vote yesterday that the Constitutional Convention won't be held, but if everyone had listened to the jaded punks right now we'd be in the same boat as California. They slept on the same question and now the religious right is slipping gay marriage bans through. This proposition would have allowed any group which could have managed 10,000 signatures to quietly force a vote which would override any judicial or legislative decision. The potential implications are endless: gay marriage and abortion bans, draconian crime laws, book banning, creationism in the schools.
I'm not trying to put down activism, and I'm certainly not suggesting we trust the democratic process to set things right, I just wish people would think for themselves a little bit more before they started spouting slogans. Violent overthrow of the capitalist system sounds great, but the privileged punk kids who are yelling about it now weren't even born back when I first heard privleged punk kids yelling about it years ago, and I still don't see anyone setting it off. A real revolution would mean no more internet or colored vinyl or vegan restaurants or punk rock shows or colleges. I'm not about to trust people whose lives revolve completely around those things to dash it all away for the greater good.
Let me preface this by saying I am by no means suggesting that I buy into the hype surrounding Obama. I think there is a fundemental inequality built into the system and there is no one who is going to swoop in and save the system and make democracy work and fix everything. I agree that buying into that myth can be a sort of anesthetic, in that it allows us to believe that selecting leaders who are largely irrelevant to our day-to-day lives is enough. Having spent years of my life either on the streets or in institutions, I know all too well there is no humane way to run a society which treats people like property, or trash in some cases. That said, I won't make the obvious argument against the hordes of white college kid liberals who are frantically absolving themselves of their white guilt through Obama.
However, the anarchist line of "fuck voting, start a revolution" smacks of privilege to me. Primarily because those of us actually living on the poverty line and raising families can't afford to wait for the revolution. If John McCain had been elected, it would have dramatically increased the chance that social programs which I rely on for food and health care for myself and my children would be slashed in favor of more Reaganomics trickle-down shit. There would be more bombs being built with money my kids need for schools, and those bombs would be killing more people I don't know somewhere far away.
It is totally true that those social programs are not a solution to poverty, and it is also true that Obama is not so much anti-war as he's just slightly less pro-war than John McCain. These are compromises and shitty choices to have to make, but they're totally necessary and crucial to myself and many other people who don't live in a bubble of privilege. I find it a little insulting, like the slogan, "Quit your fucking job"; it only sounds good when your parents (or student loans) are paying for everything. If I quit my job, we'd be starving next week.
The other thing that gets ignored is the referendums which also appear on the ballot. These are generally questions of policy which are local and direct and immediately relevant. Fortunately, enough people *did* vote yesterday that the Constitutional Convention won't be held, but if everyone had listened to the jaded punks right now we'd be in the same boat as California. They slept on the same question and now the religious right is slipping gay marriage bans through. This proposition would have allowed any group which could have managed 10,000 signatures to quietly force a vote which would override any judicial or legislative decision. The potential implications are endless: gay marriage and abortion bans, draconian crime laws, book banning, creationism in the schools.
I'm not trying to put down activism, and I'm certainly not suggesting we trust the democratic process to set things right, I just wish people would think for themselves a little bit more before they started spouting slogans. Violent overthrow of the capitalist system sounds great, but the privileged punk kids who are yelling about it now weren't even born back when I first heard privleged punk kids yelling about it years ago, and I still don't see anyone setting it off. A real revolution would mean no more internet or colored vinyl or vegan restaurants or punk rock shows or colleges. I'm not about to trust people whose lives revolve completely around those things to dash it all away for the greater good.