500 years ago there was a genocide on this land. The murderer set up a system of dominance. They call it voting. They let the common man choose who gets to rule! Isn’t that nice of them. It’s like living in a prison and being given the “right” to choose between two people to become warden. No matter who becomes warden: you’re still in jail and everything is the same. But the propaganda is so strong that the other inmates chide those who do not vote in the election for warden. Cuz they want an extra fish stick once a week.

And people flipping out over the Patriot Act? Please. The Patriot Act was signed in 1787: it’s called the constitution. So Ron Paul and his cronies and shove it.

Thank you.

My beef isn’t just with the United States Government, it’s with State power, period. And State power exists everywhere, there is no place where a person who objects to it can go to escape it. If such a place existed I’d already be living there. But it doesn’t. Thanks to centuries of imperialism and conquest, every square inch of the planet’s habitable surface is claimed by at least one State. so your argument that by failing to ‘drop out’ of the system one consents to it is rubbish. Claiming that by ‘participating in the system’ individuals give consent to State power is like saying that by breathing one agrees that corporations have the right to pollute the air. the alternative to wage labor is starvation, just like the alternative to breathing is suffocation. Consent requires a choice. No choice = no consent. period.

If you honestly feel that your doing something positive by voting for one of the various puppets that our corporate overlords have decided to put forward this year you’re perfectly free to do so. I happen to think it’s a complete and total waste of time and – moreover – an unforgivable distraction from real work that desperately needs to get done. every four years ruling class politicians con millions of working class people into working for them for free and giving them our hard earned money so we can help them gain or retain power for a few more years. I think that’s a crime and I have no desire to participate in it. It is not “compromise” (as you put it) for them to let us choose the “lesser evil,” any more then it’s compromise for a rapist to use a condom.

At the end of the election the only thing that will have changed is the faces and names. the Stateist/Capitalist system will remain completely in place and continue doing exactly what it is designed to do – extracting wealth from the working majority for the benefit of the ruling minority. your vote will have absolutely no effect whatsoever on anything. period. so why waste time and energy on it when there are so many other more effective means of building for change?

cheers,
lynx

ps – re: your question about political parties and why they only nominate 1 person each: political parties are (in theory at least) not part of the government but are actually independent organizations set up for the purpose of gaining power within the government for a specific group. having a single candidate each (or a slate of candidates in European-style Parliamentary systems) means that the party’s members will all (theoretically) vote as a block and thus increase the chance of defeating the other party. it’s nothing to do with ‘the government’ wanting to limit choices, it’s just a simple utilitarian calculation.

I was forwarded your site by a mutual friend – Miles. He’s also played some of your music for me. I’m not really into hip-hop, but for what’s it worth, I found it enjoyable. And you definitely have a flow going.

Anyway, I felt like responding to your post on voting. You say that the idea of not-voting is an implicit consent is just a rhetorical trick. I can see that, but at the same time, I have to ask if it is really that simple. The fact that you are living under the leadership at all implies consent doesn’t it? Unless you are living completely outside the American system in a shack somewhere growing your own food , being entirely self-sufficient, doesn’t that already imply that you are willing to live within the system, to some degree.

I don’t like how the election process is set up either. I don’t really understand it completely or why it’s set up the way it is. It doesn’t make much sense to me why it’s so limited – not only to 2 parties, but to one candidate for each party. Obviously you can vote for whoever, but the purpose of primaries is kind of lost on me. Why not allow promotion of multiple candidates from each party?

I suspect that you would say the reason for this is that the government is trying to limit our choice and voice. But I am curious to know the historical reasons behind how all this got set up and also what can be done to change it. I’m sure there are groups out there working on this, but they must be pretty under the radar, because I’ve never heard of them. Something that will take investigation on my end.

If I really voted for who I’d want to be president, I wouldn’t vote for McCain, Clinton, or Obama either. But I’m going to vote for one of them because I feel like, if I’m going to live in this country and participate in its system, even if I don’t agree with a lot of what’s going on, I still want to have some say in what happens, even if I’m being forced into making a choice I’m not completely in agreement with. Although I do have to say I like Obama so far. He’s not perfect and whatever progressive measures he might take, I know he’ll still kowtow to governmental power in ways that will be disadvantageous to the average citizen, but I agree with his decisions and statements a lot more than I do Clinton or McCain.

“Choosing the lesser evil” may seem like a disingenuous concept, but at the same time this is the kind of thing life forces us to do. We can’t always agree 100% with other people and if you’re going to live with others you’re going to have to compromise. Even if we had local governance, I can’t imagine that there would never be compromise. Pure democracy can never really happen because it’s hard to get people to agree on anything! Sometimes I don’t always agree with myself. Things could definitely be a lot better than they are now, but I don’t quite agree that that should mean not participating at all. We do what we can to voice our opinions and work for change. I can see your music as a vehicle for doing that. I guess I just feel like I would rather have some small say than no say at all.

cheers -