What Good Did the Vote Ever Do Anyone?

It struck Tietjens that the young woman was a good deal more interested in the cause--of votes for women--than he had given her credit for. He wasn't much in the mood for talking to young women, but it was with considerably more than the surface of his mind that he answered:

'I don't. I approve entirely of your methods: but your aims are idiotic.'

She said:

'You don't know, I suppose, that Gertie Wilson, who's in bed at our house, is wanted by the police: not only for yesterday, but for putting explosives in a whole series of letter-boxes?'

He said:

'I didn't...but it was a perfectly proper thing to do. She hasn't burned any of my letters or I might be annoyed; but it wouldn't interfere with my approval.'

'You don't think,' she asked earnestly, 'that we...mother and I...are likely to get heavy sentences for shielding her? It would be beastly bad luck on mother. Because she's an anti...'

'I don't know about the sentence,' Tietjens said, 'but we'd better get her off your premises as soon as we can...'

She said:

'Oh, you'll help?'

He answered:

'Of course, your mother can't be incommoded. She's written the only novel that's been fit to read since the eighteenth century.'

She stopped and said earnestly:

'Look here. Don't be one of those ignoble triflers who say the vote won't do women any good. Women have a rotten time. They do, really. If you'd seen what I've seen, I'm not talking through my hat.' Her voice became quite deep: she had tears in her eyes: 'Poor women do!' she said, 'little insignificant creatures. We've got to change the divorce laws. We've got to get better conditions. You couldn't stand it if you knew what I know.'

Her emotion vexed him, for it seemed to establish a sort of fraternal intimacy that he didn't at the moment want. Women do not show emotion except before their families. He said drily:

'I daresay I shouldn't. But I don't know, so I can!' She said with deep disappointment:

'Oh, you are a beast! And I shall never beg your pardon for saying that. I don't believe you mean what you say, but merely to say it is heartless.'

This was another of the counts of Sylvia's indictment and Tietjens winced again. She explained:

'You don't know the case of the Pimlico army clothing factory workers or you wouldn't say the vote would be no use to women.'

'I know the case perfectly well,' Tietjens said: 'It came under my official notice, and I remember thinking that there never was a more signal instance of the uselessness of the vote to anyone.'

'We can't be thinking of the same case,' she said.

'We are,' he answered. 'The Pimlico army clothing factory is in the constituency of Westminster; the Under-Secretary for War is member for Westminster; his majority at the last election was six hundred. The clothing factory employed seven hundred men at 1s. 6d. an hour, all these men having votes in Westminster. The seven hundred men wrote to the Under-Secretary to say that if their screw wasn't raised to two bob they'd vote solid against him at the next election...'

Miss Wannop said: 'Well then!'

'So,' Tietjens said: 'The Under-Secretary had the seven hundred men at eighteenpence fired and took on seven hundred women at tenpence. What good did the vote do the seven hundred men? What good did a vote ever do anyone?'

Miss Wannop checked at that and Tietjens prevented her exposure of his fallacy by saying quickly:

'Now, if the seven hundred women, backed by all the other ill-used, sweated women of the country, had threatened the Under-Secretary, burned the pillar-boxes, and cut up all the golf greens round his country house, they'd have had their wages raised to half a crown next week. That's the only straight method. It's the feudal system at work.'

'Oh, but we couldn't cut up golf greens,' Miss Wannop said. 'At least the W.S.P.U. debated it the other day, and decided that anything so unsporting would make us too unpopular. I was for it personally.'

Tietjens groaned:

'It's maddening,' he said, 'to find women, as soon as they get in Council, as muddleheaded and as afraid to face straight issues as men!...'

--Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not, Book I of the tetralogy Parade's End (or "The Tietjens Novels").

Why Things Don't Change--or Your "Vote" is Meaningless

Okay, here's something that makes sense to me...what about you?

All forms of government beyond the city level--beyond the very local--are corrupt. (Likely they are also corrupt locally, but there is a real face-to-face opportunity to call this out and make changes.) They are corrupt in any number of ways...the systems themselves have been "re-engineered" to serve a different purpose than what was likely the original intention.

Okay, no need to blame things--people seem to want to game everything they can and I don't have the ability to call chicken or egg on any of this. I tend to simply believe that the folks that find their way to the the "top" of systems are folks who want to/know how to use that system to their own best advantage. That does not make all of us intrinsically corrupt(able). We are weak though. And I think it's why we give so many fraudulent persons a pass--we know that we are weak and who knows what we might do should we be given the keys to the kingdom.

Okay, in that case, there should be "fail-safe" systems in place to help balance the drive for power and money in those who are at the top. Now, this is the idea of "checks and balances" in the system of government we have. However, those "top-feeders" have infiltrated all of these branches of government and no longer seem fit to form these "checks"--definitely there is no longer any ideological nor practical balance. Ideologues abound but their ideology tends to be centered on off-shore accounts in the caymans. So, in this very surface account, your vote is meaningless--and in our current system, you also don't care about how your government operates as long as you can find a way to keep living the way you want to and believe you might get a little more some day. It's very "self" centered in every way. We only care about other people, on the whole, as means to our own ends. I do not believe this is healthy or necessary--in other words, I believe this is learned behavior, not intrinsic to our being.

Okay, here's the idea, old as the hills, or at least the Greeks in Athens...government by lottery...like jury selection I suppose.

This creates very clear requirements for the polis as a whole. We must groom every single one of our citizens to be capable of managing whatever role might come their way by lottery.

This means REAL education for everyone...the type of education that fosters thinking and not testing ability. We need elastic, ethical minds. We will all be each others' keepers in this way.

Rules and policies MUST be simple. Why should they be complex? No good reason. Complexity serves the cabal of insiders only. Simplicity can serve us all well.

I'm out...what are your thoughts?

Tribal Voting?

Just now at Hullabaloo.

In my email this morning:

A very good question?

How come Jews can vote for Jews, Blacks can vote for Blacks, Latinos can vote for Latinos and Muslims can vote for Muslims, but if a White Christian votes for a White Christian, this person is Anti-Semitic or Racists?

Well, Why?
WAKE-UP!!!!

So, can we answer this question in a way that makes sense to the questioner (or ourselves)? Personally, my answer is initially that I absolutely have no thought regarding this particular "tribal" category. (Digby points out that one must almost always vote for a white xtian.) And honestly, at this point I would give my left you know what for a candidate that said all that was hooey (and meant it of course).

So, it's not the voting for someone who "just happens to be" like you--it's the intentionality of the choice that matters. Or better, using this as a criteria for your choice (and having be primary).

And this I think I can link back to one of my previous posts on voting for the government you want to be ruled by--this requires an knowledge of policy propositions and political philosophy; do you want to be represented by a religious ideology? Do you want to be represented by a person with a particular color? We can argue that the "thinking" mind will be able to discern prejudices in the self--but I have to say that I don't find this to be the case when talking to most people (about anything, not just voting, or god, or capital punishment or war, etc.).

I guess what I'm asking for is a way to create governing criteria that matters in a way that benefits all of us...yes, impossible. But there has to be a better way than the current system of simply buying visual and auditory manipulation-machine messages and bombarding people with them.

Sarah pointed out to me that nearly every liberal she knew, when taking one of those online "which politician do you most resemble" quizzes, turned out to be Dennis Kucinich. This made for a really interesting discussion that I think comes down to very real principles of human understanding and empathy for ALL people that seems lacking on the Right. (But this is not my point here.)

Maybe voting should be more like that online test that measures your political "beliefs" by how you act if you were faced with some legislative choices. Maybe it gets us to the same place or maybe it becomes a more subtle template for how government could be...or maybe it's just another tool of manipulation. Beats me...but if I'm a Dennis Kucinich, why am I stuck with John Kerry?

(By the way, it's my opinion that Kucinich could only say what he says because, 1. he's in the "people's house" and 2. because no one imagines he will ever yield any real power and 3. because he looks like he does--sorry to have to say it--a correlative to point number 2: if he looked more like the rest of the "successes" in politics he would likely then be coerced into acting like them. But maybe not...dime store politics for you.)

Dennis Kucinich
Public Persuasion