PRAXIS

Followers of this blog will be familiar with my longstanding position on fake democracy. I actively campaign for a real democracy but I’ve never registered to vote; ‘I don’t negotiate with terrorists’. ‘I refuse to legitimise a rigged game’. ‘Don’t vote it only encourages them’. ‘Whoever wins, we’ll still get corporate governance’,…(and other snidey one-liners).

I believe real democracy should be practised daily with our families, friends and the communities we share. If parliament conducted itself with the actual democratic rigour and discipline that most occupations, squats and protest camps do, it would be in a much better state than it currently is.

Each time the electioneering machine starts up, I stand on the sidelines terrified by the effect it has on everybody, voters and non-voters alike. It’s horrible. You can’t just turn it off, because it effects (infects) everybody. We’re all supposed to have black and white  opinions on things which aren’t black and white and which otherwise wouldn’t interest us in the slightest…we’re supposed to pick a ‘leader’ and a ‘party’…(or snipe and heckle from the sidelines…)

I have expressed my cynicism about the state of electoral politics in this blog and elsewhere ad nauseum.

I’ve also discussed the paradox of the ‘diamonds in the rough’. Principled politicians who actually speak truth to power, offering us hope for a better world. Idealists, in an environment where we must hesitate before using the word ‘idealist’, or ‘idealism’. When did ‘idealism’ become an insult? Idealism should be a virtue but it is generally conflated with naivety….why?

Continue reading Reconsidering Voting and Democracy. [PRAXIS]