Kodos '08: Democratic Self-Flagellation and the Strange Mentality of Conscientious Abstention

Three times in the last couple o' days I have read people say "this is why I don't vote" in reference to some douchebag or other who is running for political office.

They're all players in some grand, supernatural Jewish conspiracy anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I understand where peeps are coming from with this, and - unlike the Australian Electoral Commission - I am actually cool with people not voting if they don't want to. Whatever you wanna do, man. I do hear ya: the lesser of two evils is still evil... that is true.

Given the choice though - and you are actually given a choice - what are you gonna do?

Option 1: Evil. The massive right-wing bigot with an irrepressible lust for power, no scruples and access to incomprehensibly large political coffers, unlimited PR and ubiquitous support from influential media barons, old money, royalty, clergymen, finance industry sociopaths and almost every trusted corporate brand known to mankind since Keating first floated the dollar.

Option 2: Lesser Evil. Back when they were young and idealistic, the former student unionist joined a party that used to be left-wing. They now keep their ideals a closely-guarded secret, publicly hovering somewhere around the middle of the political spectrum, at least when the press is looking. They are under the advice and very-watchful eyes of hack staffers who are always on the phone to the Gallop Poll crew, endlessly trying to suss out which particular bigoted contradiction the public expects them to uphold in any given week.

Option 3: Third Party. Choose between paranoid lunatics, religious zealots, and activists whose records you used to buy in the 80s but you're not so sure about them anymore because Option 1 and Option 2 have told you they're bad for the economy so many times that you're starting to actually believe it - but it's not like anybody votes for them anyway. Besides, the notion that politicians might stand on principle seems utterly preposterous. They are definitely either lying to you or to themselves, and sharing their blog posts on social media will result in your immediate ostracism from your work colleagues, brother-in-law, your former school chums and anybody else who still watches A Current Affair.

Option 4: Do Nothing. Sleep in on election day, have a really long shower, fire up the Xbox and make nachos. Drink heaps of liquor. Adopt a sense of smug superiority. If anyone brings up the vote count throughout the remainder of the election period, or if they mention the result in any way, make them feel as uncomfortable and self-conscious about the whole thing as you possibly can. When Option 1 gets voted in and outlaws the consumption of nachos and enforces mandatory church attendance on both days of every weekend - under penalty of corporeal punishment - remind everyone that you didn't vote anyway and that the situation is therefore not your fault.

To my mind, Option 4 is the shittest option, and if you read on now I'll tell ya why.

...and here's why I can't go for that.

Surely it's better to prevent the Biggest Jerk from having their Finger On The Button, even if it means voting for a career politician who in your opinion is not one hundred percent perfect.

In other words, surely you'd want to go for Options 2 or 3 as they are the most likely to keep Option 1 the fuck out of power - thereby increasing your chances of not being arrested for pursuing Option 4.

In the long run, this is very fucking important. When someone is allowed to take office, society allows them access to fucking guns, and funds, and manpower - entire armies of soldiers and cops - all out to prove themselves, all contractually obliged to follow the orders of politicians. Think about that. It's terrifying.

As a white male member of the pacified majority, it might be technically possible to drop out of the whole pantomime at the moment... but how often do you wake up one morning to find that yet another fucking thing that you used to be able to do is now illegal? In Australia it happens all the time.

Think about what you're tacitly endorsing here.

Ten or twenty or a hundred or four hundred or fifteen thousand good people who are just over it abstaining from voting cause they're all crooks m8 - or because the Lesser of Two Evils doesn't offer an absolutely flawless solution, or whatever - could easily be the difference between...

Damn straight! Al Gore vs. George W. Bush

Sure, one of those guys was an arsehat politician with very questionable family members who were the active enemy of free speech and artistic expression throughout most of the 1980s. He was a journalist - they can't be trusted - and he once scored a scholarship from the Rockerfellers. I'm referring of course to Al Gore. Sound the alarm.

He seems nice enough but frankly I don't know enough about Gore to call whether he would have been a very good president or not. And, especially given Tipper's record, he could have been a jerk even despite his apparent best intentions re: global warming and social justice and the fact that he, unlike his opponent, actually rocked up to work during the whole Vietnam thing.

Still, I doubt he would have made his way into the All-Time Top Ten Presidents list. It is possible to argue that he would not have been perfect...

"...and those who harbor them."

But the other guy? You have got to be fucking kidding!

George W. Bush was the most dangerously apathetic, incompetent boob in the 223 year history of the US executive office. He was a third generation drunken jerk - the Idiot Son of an Arsehole Son of a Nazi Sympathiser - a foolish elitist, a one-time deserter, a warmonger, suddenly in control of the most powerful empire the world has ever known.

Gore, for all I know, might also have been vulnerable to top level corruption. I don't know. Everyone has their price and he was, after all, a politician. However, Bush actively facilitated what happened next. His election by such a preposterous minority was one of the worst things that has ever happened.

America's going to be suffering the consequences of Not Voting For Al Gore for decades to come.

Bush did irreparable damage to East/West relations.

Worldwide we've all had our freedoms curtailed by simpering Allied governments.

It was the corporatocracy's finest hour.

Now, this analogy may not be watertight. I don't know whether Gore would have gone the same way in the aftermath of That Event (You Know The One)... but I doubt it - not the same as Bush did. The Powers That Be went to considerable effort to rig that 2000 election and it worked out very well indeed for them.

But I'm pretty confident that if every disillusioned left-leaning liberal who said fuck it, I'm not voting for either goon had actually turned out instead and voted for the Lesser Dickhead, then the Republicans simply wouldn't have had the numbers to pull off their swindle.

(Unless said liberals accidentally voted for Ralph Nader, but that's a whole other thing.)

So there you go!

Have a think about that whole thing, I guess.

You don't have to vote, but if you're saying this is why I don't vote because of douchebags playing the same old power games, well that's understandable - but be aware that sometimes democracy is simply about kicking the biggest jerk out on their hole before they get a chance to ruin things for everybody.

So, I suppose I am more NOFX than Propagandhi on this one... and that's the reason why I'll grit my teeth and go with Option 2 if there's no suitable Option 3, every time.

Q&A WA: Don't mention the war!

This one's an opinion piece...

The question I was handed by an anonymous source
from within the mining industry.
Source: scanned.

In November 2010, the ABC's Q&A programme came to Perth.

As I have, in recent times, been reasonably interested in What Goes On, I was particularly keen to become involved.

Eventually, after a near-miss in which I was not selected, a friend of mine came to the party with a guest pass.

It probably goes without saying that this event was intense.

On the panel was my most loathed of jerks: the enviro vandal and Protector of Big Business, the Right Honourable Cockroach, Mr Colin Barnett.

This man has an utterly infuriating position on everything.

Early in the programme he made the blanket announcement that if Australia became a republic then WA would effectively secede:

That is a distinct possibility. [see transcript]

Later, he dismissed the issue of Aboriginal incarceration in the WA prison system; going on to explain:

You know, many of the young Aboriginal people in prison are there for traffic offences, for driving without a licence in Aboriginal communities. Well, that's clearly a ridiculous situation. [see transcript]

(To be fair, he did briefly mention that leglisation would be introduced to try and combat this. Whether it ever happens is another matter.)

I tried repeatedly, in vain, to question this man regarding the loathed Stop & Search bill; which was still on the table at the time.

But it seems the show was focused on more nationally-important (I suppose) issues: the relationship between the mining industry and Aboriginal people, asylum seeker policy, and the like.

The intensity on the ground floor was insane and bizarre. It's something I won't forget in a hurry.

The weirdest part was the audience dynamic.

Now, it seems that most people are generally good people; and most of the rest are at least well-intentioned.

It doesn't take half a heart to realise that, even though I'm sure most people would probably prefer that the issue would just go away, what's going on with asylum seekers in this country is pretty fucked.

So generally, and this is just an example issue, most people in the crowd were pretty appalled by the Premier's attitude toward the issue and the vague lip service paid by the ALP's representative Stephen Smith.

Only the Greens' Rachel Siewert was willing to show some balls.

Unfortunately she is a sensible and informed, quietly spoken woman who can't really hold a candle to sensationalist questions such as this one from Gerrit Van Der Sluys:

...here in WA we are increasingly used as a perceived dumping ground for possible asylum seekers ... why is it that these people are being given more help and better treatment then homeless and impoverished Australian citizens? [see transcript]

Enter the Young Liberals.

These infuriating ideologues have to be in the highest category of 'jerk' known to man.

As I quickly learned by squabbling with them on Twitter later in the evening, they hold belligerent and dismissive attitudes towards every idea that's not based on neo-liberal post-colonialism.

They probably represented about a third, or maybe a quarter, of the audience on this particular evening. That's pretty high odds. There were heaps of them.

One of them (LYLSWA Treasurer Anthony Spagnolo) was even referred to by name by Barnett.

It's actually to the ABC's credit that these people were given a chance to speak--and they spoke a fair bit.

But it's an example of their boisterous ingratitude that they were on Twitter throughout the proceedings claiming that the "communist ABC" was censoring them and swinging the debate in the leftist direction.

If anything, these douche-bags were over-represented.

It would be disingenuous for me to claim that there isn't a place for conservative politics within the Grand Plethora. Of course there is, so long as all other angles of discourse get a look-in.

But if this is the future of the conservative party in this country then we are completely and utterly fucked.

Between Barnett--with his monarchist, protectionist, neo-liberal agenda--the steely-eyed lost cause Julie Bishop, and these kids in the audience, there wasn't one among them who came out not looking like a complete fuck head.

The only conservative who came out looking like he actually had a soul was mining industry fucko Andrew Forrest.

His attempts to give Aboriginal people large-scale employment in the mining industry are admirable, but, of course, they fail to take into account the fact that not everybody views life the same way he does.

Thank christ, then, that Marianne Mackay had managed to land herself a spot in the front row.

This relentless woman, who I'd not encountered before but have seen talk a couple of times since, pointed out fiercely that the traditional Aboriginal worldview of Country is anathema to large-scale industrial mining, and asked what the point was of employing Aboriginal people to do the one thing they didn't want to do:

If people want to help Aboriginal people get employment, don't help our people kill our land. You know, save our environment. Get on environmental protection. [see transcript]

I'm white, of course, but I'm also an environmentalist and I wish this point had been discussed further.

(It's important to note that the one Aboriginal member of the panel, Tony Wiltshire, is a successful businessman and is clearly down with the capitalist paradigm as a way forward for equality.)

But the thing I'll remember most about this whole ordeal--and it was indeed an ordeal--was the man who slipped me a piece of paper imploring me to ask his question.

He'd evidently sussed me out and desperately wanted his question answered.

"I can't ask this," he told me urgently.

"I work in mining. If I ask it, I'll lose my job."

Shit, I'll try! I thought, but I was unsuccessful in this regard.

Peering down at the neatly typed and folded piece of paper he had given me I saw the following words... written repeatedly.

Mr Premier, would you let us know whether your government has any public policies or strategies to maintain at least the current prosperity and living standards of all Western Australians, after you have send [sic] the last shipment of WA's non-renewable resources overseas? [see image above]

It shits me greatly that I wasn't quicker on the uptake.

Somebody needed to ask this question, because it's one of the most fundamental ones that Western Australian society is facing.

There's no question we're getting fat off digging up shit and selling it, but what (on Earth) are we going to do afterward?

We in WA don't exactly have the best track record of pulling off these kinds of large-scale stunts without screwing ourselves long-term... one look at the Wheatbelt should remind us of this.

As Andrew Forrest said in his final speech, to the baffled consternation of many people both in the studio and on Twitter:

I've got a number of incredibly rich friends and I can assure you they're no happier than anyone in this audience. [56:10]

Well, if money doesn't make you happy, what does? And where are our priorities? And what legacy are we leaving behind?

I do hope Q&A returns at some point, because all I was left with after this one was dozens of questions, mild confusion and a battered psyche.

NB: All unattributed quotes in this article are the author's own interpretation based on ground floor experience. It's not possible, to my knowledge, to link to old #qanda quotes on Twitter, but if it is please let me know and I'll attribute them more thoroughly. The specific Q&A episode can be streamed, and the transcript accessed, here.