The Sand in the Gears Voting Guide

This is the day when people with scant knowledge of candidates go to the polls to choose among them, after which they are self-righteously indignant at their counterparts who had the grace and good sense not to vote. Economists term this lack of information "rational ignorance." The notion is that, given the odds that one will actually influence the election, one is better off not spending time learning about the candidates. Unfortunately, rational ignorance doesn't translate into voter abstinence. This explains, among other things, the persistence of most politicians.

So we face the reality that ignorant people don't like abstinence. It makes sense, then, to provide them all with a prophylactic of sorts. Thus I give you my Voting Guide. Please feel free to distribute it on college campuses, sell it in gas station bathrooms and drugstores, and so on. Remember, unprotected voting can kill you.

First rule of voting: Politicians put everything in Us-Them terms, because we are tribal creatures. If you're wondering, when you hear a politician speak, to which group you belong, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Do I have a job?

2. Do I believe in every part of the Bill of Rights?

If you answer "yes" to both questions, you are a "Them."

If you answer "no" to both questions, you are in the wrong place, and were probably looking for this site.

If you answer "yes" to only one of the questions, just wait -- if we get enough people like you, we'll all be answering "no" to both soon enough.

Women in politics. I'll spare you the essay. Just a few pointers that you may also find to be helpful when dating:

1. Beware of women with earrings longer than their hair.

2. Women whose eyebrows are a different color than their hair are not to be trusted.

3. If she mentions throw-weight, vote for her. If she mentions Head Start, don't vote for her.

Come to think of it, these rules apply equally well to men in politics.

Terminology. Be suspicious of anyone who has worked in or voted to fund a place with two or more of the following words in its title: community, development, job, training, peace, studies, sustainable, justice.

All perfectly good words, hijacked by twits. That raises a question: what other words have the idiotarians hijacked? Certainly "liberal" belongs at the top of the list. It is closely followed by "progressive," for after the socialists and busybodies defiled the meaning of "liberal," they needed another misleading moniker. I suppose they'll move on to another one over time, like a democratic committee of locusts with Ph.D.'s.

What else belongs on the list? Fairness comes to mind. Equality. There are so many, in fact, that this Voting Guide wouldn't be complete without a lexicon:

Campaign Finance Reform: ensuring that grubby new money doesn't interfere with the goals of ill-gotten old money.

Community: people who agree with the intelligentsia (see "Liberal," below), and whose lack of gainful employment affords them ample time to pose as representatives of those of us with jobs.

Development: the use of other people's money on projects that ensure no economic, social, or moral development ever occurs in the neighborhoods targeted.

Diversity: the acceptance of people who look different, so long as they think and vote the same way (see "Progressive," below)

Equality: the use of discriminatory means to produce unequal outcomes.

Fairness: outcomes based on the demands of professional victims, as opposed to outcomes commensurate to inputs.

Freedom: absence of restrictions on the favored classes, accompanied by the requirement that the rest of us foot the bill.

Job: what people on the left want, but not so bad as to find or keep one.

Justice: what people on the left want, except when it is applied to people of color caught robbing the corner grocery.

Peace: the encouragement of war through perpetual bribery of thugs.

Progressive: someone who opposes reform of taxes, the legal system, education, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, health insurance, environmental regulation, and workplace rules, all in the name of being forward-looking.

Studies: the avoidance of knowledge.

Sustainable: a level of human reproduction and activity that does not sustain the population.

Training: workfare for bad teachers.

Finally, a word on representation. One doesn't necessarily have to be a member of a group to represent that group. One does need to have a grasp, however, of the reality faced by the people one claims to represent. With that in mind, you might think about this as you go to the polls: what does someone who has spent 14 hours a day working as a politician his entire life, or even worse, a trial attorney, know about running a business, or raising a family, or providing for a community through a church or civic organization?

In other words, what can people with little time for children, who have never themselves held gainful employment outside a system of arbitrary seizure and allocation, possibly have to say about running our lives? Do we really want to give such people control over our pocketbooks, our schools, our national defense? Perhaps instead of the (D) and (R) labels next to candidates' names, we can have the following designation:

(J): has held a job in a non-government entity for longer than two years.

(K): has kids and actually spends time with them (this designation would be applied only with unanimous agreement of the candidate's children).

(-L): is not a lawyer, and is not married to one.

(C): knows what the inside of a church or temple looks like.

Wouldn't that kind of information be much more helpful? I guess if full information were the goal, however, we'd make each candidate attach price tags to his spending proposals. And if we really believed in accountability, we'd subsequently deduct from his net wealth any difference between his estimate and the actual bill.

But of course, no system is perfect. We are imperfect people, bound to cast our votes today for less perfect people, who will in turn ignore us for two or four or six years while spending our money on things that sound good to people who are not net taxpayers. The only saving grace is that they know they'll have to come back and explain themselves if they want to be re-elected, and some of us -- just a few -- may actually be paying attention.

So go forth, fellow citizens, and if you can't find anyone you like, just invert the whole game, and use your vote to stick it to the worst bastards in each race.

If you think about voting that way, it's actually kind of fun.

Posted by Woodlief on November 05, 2002 at 07:53 AM