The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
–Winston Churchill, UK Prime Minister
I’m going to the polls tomorrow to vote in the South African local government elections. It will be the first time in many years that I will actually be voting for someone.
You see, until recently, I refused to engage in the electoral process for many years because of utter disillusionment with politics and the calibre of politicians demanding our vote. In the last election cycle, I went to the polls with the explicit purpose of spoiling my ballot.
I am under no illusion that spoiling my ballot made any more difference than abstaining. At least I got the satisfaction of participating and shutting up those who claim that if you abstain, you don’t get to complain.
This time, however, I’ve decided to cast a vote in my ward for someone I don’t know, from a party that has no real chance of winning. His manifesto makes pretty much the same election promises as everyone else. The only thing that makes him stand out (for me) is the party he is representing.
He’s from the South African Communist Party. Yes, the party that everyone has been conditioned to fear, distrust and denigrate, by the people we should really fear, distrust and denigrate. Even if, by some remote chance, his party wins, they could do no more harm than any of the others. Who knows, maybe the Big Red Scare may yet prove to be the big red saviour.
Voting RED will be a revolutionary act for me, personally, and my way of giving the finger to a deeply corrupt system that has held humanity enthralled for far too long. I will not apologise for flirting with communism here, but at some point I will expand on why I’m now very partial to socialism as a political philosophy.
Meanwhile, while I’m on the topic of deeply corrupt systems, U.S. citizens also go to the polls today. Many there will be voting for a completely different kind of RED; the kind that promises to entrench the corrupt system indefinitely.
Polls there predict a BLUE wave. Fortunately, here in South Africa, we’re not captivated by polling. We find our entertainment elsewhere, and we don’t rely on politicians, endless hours of political advertising, or television network punditry to provide it. We’re smart like that!
We were also not subjected to minute-by-minute coverage of our President’s political rallying, where he covered such pressing subjects as men’s beautiful biceps and astonishing asses. We’re also not updated regularly on who’s spending obscene amounts of money to defeat whom. We’re a third-world shithole by Trumpian standards, and we don’t have that kind of money to throw into the… well, shithole.
Listening to Jon Stewart’s performative exasperation on The Daily Show this morning left me bemused that U.S. citizens still tolerate the political shitshow that passes for an electoral system. President Trump almost described the system correctly in his closing election speech when he mentioned the “massive piece of poo…”
Neither Trump’s incessant lying and insane ramblings1 nor the political backstabbing, sniping, and the media’s perverse hunger to cover it, as highlighted by Stewart, are anything new. To cap it all, Trump’s closing words in a truly demented last speech to voters were,
We have a country that we can be proud of again. We were laughed at all over the world. For four years, we were laughed at like we were stupid people. We were laughed at by every ruler, every president, every prime minister, every king, but they don’t laugh anymore.
On the contrary, I am pretty sure that practically every ruler, president, prime minister and king is laughing. Very hard!
I’m also sure that the BLUE WAVE is going to be a BROWN TSUNAMI just like it’s always been. Nothing’s going to change in America, just as I expect nothing to change here in South Africa.
If we expect to vote and then sit back and hope things will change, we’ll be very disappointed, just like we always are. We may think that Mark Twain’s astute observation on voting is cynical, but there’s more truth in it than we care to admit:
If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.
What changes things is holding your representative to account, not complaining bitterly, cheering him or her at rallies, or delighting at their appearance on television.
Your tools for holding your representative to account must include tar and feathers in your starter kit.
- If you still don’t know, watch the attached Daily Show segment to find out what this post’s title refers to. ↩︎
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