Monday, January 26, 2009

The Political Wisdom of the Party Store Guy

I just returned from a party store at which I bought some pop--seriously, it's a work night--, and noticed that the proprietor was distributing some "Stop Unfair Tobacco Taxes" leaflets, upon which were a phone number, web site, and very brief argument against how congress is singling out smokers again.

I took one and asked him if he voted Libertarian. He said that he didn't. I replied that Libertarians wouldn't do what the fascists and socialists...er, republicans and democrats were doing in terms of taxation.

His reply was simple and elegant.

"I don't vote, man," he said, "'cuz I don't believe in that one man, one vote shit."

I nodded.

"Besides," he added, "if they won't listen to reason, then why will they listen to me?"

I nodded and said, "You're right."

I then felt like buying a little something extra to add to my pop, but it is a work night, after all.

Note: It didn't occur to me to ask why in the heck he was distributing political-action materials if he didn't believe in voting. Either he didn't want to engage in a political discussion with me, or he was distributing the materials because his boss told him to do so, or he somehow sees that lobbying is much more powerful than voting.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:25 PM

    Dude, I was looking forward to a PARTY story, perhaps from your days in high school or college. Maybe a night out with Jeff P. I'm so disappointed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would go with Door #3. I don't vote, and I devote tons of my time putting out (anti-)political information to educate the people. My dream isn't that people all vote in Libertarians (though that would be preferable to Reps or Dems). Rather, my dream is that enough people say, "Eh, no thanks" when a shrinking group of people still hold their cute elections and try to boss everybody else around.

    You could say, "Well even if just 10% believe it, if they control the army it's good enough." However, what if the potential future recruits for the army are being persuaded by my website, or by the leaflet your buddy was handing out?

    My point is that focusing on voting is exactly what the politicians want you to do. You are playing the rigged game that they designed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:23 PM

    Maybe he preferred none of the above, and would rather just skip to protesting and revolution instead?

    ReplyDelete
  4. As Thoreau said, we can be a friction to the machine.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BAR:

    Sorry for the typo. My best party story, of recent engagements, is when I and a few friends were playing Rock Band.

    One of them got so wasted that he puked on my carpet.

    Can you imagine that?

    ReplyDelete

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