The art of non-voting

in #anarchy5 years ago

52 percent of Americans did not vote in the last election, which means the majority of Americans did not give their consent to be ruled by either Trump or Clinton.

If America is a democracy, how come there is still a government in place when the majority of people didn't give their consent to be governed? Why did the minority of voters get to impose their will upon the majority of non-voters? 🤔

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I wonder what the statistics will be for today's farce of an election in the UK. My guess is, despite the media desperately trying to convince the public that most people are now radically politicized, most people in the UK probably don't wish to be ruled, either.

"No man has received from nature the right to rule his fellow human beings." - Denis Diderot, 1751

Vote for no one. Rule yourself.

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I respectfully disagree.

Firstly, your opening assertion, that 52 percent of Americans did not vote in the 2016 election, is factually incorrect. According to the United States Census Bureau:

In 2016, 61.4 percent of the citizen voting-age population reported voting, a number not statistically different from the 61.8 percent who reported voting in 2012.

I don't care one way or the other that you don't like Trump, nor that you're pushing some sort of anarchist worldview - just don't push bogus info as fact, while in the same breath decrying media manipulation vis-à-vis radical politicization.

If you are willingly a citizen of the United States of America, by default you indeed consent to be ruled by whoever is duly elected to any office representing the jurisdiction where you reside, be it local, state, or national. And by willingly forfeiting your right to vote, by default you are assigning your neighbor power of attorney over your democratic franchise, and must live with whoever they elect. (Or to put it in your own terms, you are consenting to be ruled by your neighbor.)

I think you are vastly overstating the principles upon which many non-voters are acting when they choose not to vote - it's not that they are refusing to give consent to their rulers, but simply that they just don't give a shit. (I trust you can appreciate the difference.)

And finally, you end your post with "Vote for no one. Rule yourself." You should know that non-participation in the democratic process is not the same thing as political self-rule. By abstaining from voting, you are not exempt from the same rule of law as everyone else, nor do you escape having to live with decisions made by politicians who legally represent you, regardless of your rhetoric.

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I do not respectfully disagree, I disrespectfully disagree with you, because you are advocating violence.

"If you are willingly a citizen of the United States of America, by default you indeed consent to be ruled by whoever is duly elected to any office representing the jurisdiction where you reside."

That is not how consent works. Being born on a particular patch of land does not give anyone permission to rule over me. By that logic the slaves had no means to rebel against against their masters.

Consent works like this: If I say NO to something, and you go ahead and do it anyway, you are a violent thug.

I am the owner of my life, not you, not the politicians. Of course, you would never have the balls to attempt to violate my freedoms in person, so being the statist coward you are, elect the state as a proxy to enforce your views upon myself and others.

You see, some of us just want to be left the fuck alone, but control freaks like yourself want to impose your views upon others and tell people what they can and can not do. Here's a thought: Do whatever the fuck you want, so long as you're not harming others.

"I don't care one way or the other that you don't like Trump."

I couldn't give two shits about Trump. I do not consent to be ruled by ANYONE.

I never said anything about giving consent by being born, but rather, as an adult who can move to anywhere in the world, inhabited or otherwise, the fact that you choose to remain under state rule is all the consent the government needs to rule over you, particularly if you are making use of anything provided or sanctioned by the governnment.

In your day-to-day life, do you make use of any publicly-funded services, facilities, or infrastructure? Were you taught to read and write by public school teachers? Have you ever received medical care by a doctor in a public hospital? Have you ever used a public library? Do you travel on roads or highways?

If you were to live with any sort of integrity, you would find some uninhabited patch of land where you can practice total self-rule, and not have to compromise yourself by using goods, services, and infrastructure built and paid for by other people. Of course, that would also mean staying off the internet, as it was developed by western democracies, particularly via the US Department of Defense. The fact that you are even communicating through this medium exposes your commitment to self-rule as fraudulent.

I'm guessing you simply don't have the integrity to live as a savage in the wilderness - after all, that would mean having nobody to listen to your brand of stoner politics, along with your meaningless declarations of self-rule, while enjoying the fruits of things built and paid for by other people.

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