09-04-2012, 09:03 PM
Thanks, all. My cynicism needed to be rebooted, and it has.
I'm going to try hard not to read my voter's guide this year. It feels very irresponsible, but if the majority won't bother then there's no point in me bothering and it just makes me angry that I take the time to learn when the vast majority won't and so any informed voting is just spitting in the wind of ignorance easily manipulated by the wealthy. It's garbage in and then garbage out. I hope this is the last year I vote. The last few elections I only stayed registered to vote on measures anyway (and simply voted politicians, sometimes using a write-in, so that the one counting my vote couldn't vote "for me.") It's best to focus my energies where they count than where they don't.
And as Mencken said:
"Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
"No one in this world, so far as I know and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
"Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." (ETA: I'm suddenly wondering what Mencken would've said about Bush, you know the guy many voters felt they could "have a beer with."
)
I'm going to try hard not to read my voter's guide this year. It feels very irresponsible, but if the majority won't bother then there's no point in me bothering and it just makes me angry that I take the time to learn when the vast majority won't and so any informed voting is just spitting in the wind of ignorance easily manipulated by the wealthy. It's garbage in and then garbage out. I hope this is the last year I vote. The last few elections I only stayed registered to vote on measures anyway (and simply voted politicians, sometimes using a write-in, so that the one counting my vote couldn't vote "for me.") It's best to focus my energies where they count than where they don't.
And as Mencken said:
"Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
"No one in this world, so far as I know and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
"Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." (ETA: I'm suddenly wondering what Mencken would've said about Bush, you know the guy many voters felt they could "have a beer with."
)
![[-]](https://gayspeak.com/images/duende_v3_local/collapse.png)
