Shame! Shame!

Dear Editor,

I suppose most ETS!er's spent a few minutes today voting, doing your civic duty to help determine the Future of Seattle and Washington State. I say, Shame on You!

You may even have taken Geov's advice and voted for the trigger-lock ordinance, no doubt on the assumption that creating another class of consensual criminals, expanding the state's powers, and increasing its surveillance of the population is a good thing. Thanks, guys! I feel safer already.

But the basic reason you're a bastard isn't that you voted for the wrong side, but that you voted at all. Our legislators derive their authority from the consent of the governed; the process itself depends on people submitting to the civic religion of balloting.

You went to the polls and chose someone to make rules for me, decisions for me, and plans for me. Of course, you could argue that it doesn't matter; one suit is as good as the next. (Hell, even Charlie "voice of the people" Chong is pulling for Olympics 2012.)

You could even say that by voting for certain Initiatives, you are "reducing" the state's role in making decisions for me. For example, you may believe that by voting for medical marijuana, you're taking a stand for treating sick people with compassion, not jail time. But all you're really doing is reaffirming the state's right to decide which drugs a person can take, and how they should take them, based on your votes. So screw you: I don't need a doctor's permission, and I sure as hell don't need you voting for a law that requires I get one.

There are alternatives to voting, just as Geov obviously feels there are alternatives to paying taxes. There are also alternatives to government. Surely the readers of Eat The State! can understand that.

--Matt Asher, Seattle

G.P. replies: Hey, Matt, great letter! Thoughtful, consistent, articulate, full of self-righteous anger. Shame about the real world. The U.S. already has by far the lowest electoral turnout of any Western Democracy (sic). How many more of us do you think need to stop voting before the politicians will simply give up and go home?

As we noted in the election issue, voting is no substitute for activism. There are plenty of alternatives to government. Meantime, til global capitalism crumbles from its internal contradictions, these assholes are still making decisions that cause real damage to real people--and have resources that can be redirected to provide real help to real people. You don't need a prescription for a drug, but maybe an elderly woman in Centralia, who doesn't have the hip, cool connections you do, and who doesn't inhabit the same universe as whatever mythic Pot-Not-Bombs counterculture you might imagine, wouldn't get that relief otherwise. Do you give a fuck about her? Is your anarchism based on a desire for better ways than nation-states for 6 billion people to interact, or a desire to not be bothered by (or accountable to) the other 5,999,999,999? And how, exactly is "what government can do, we can do better" different from Republicans who want to replace the social safety net (welfare, Medicaid, etc.) entirely with volunteer charities? Great in principle, lethal in practice.

I'm all for imagining, and doing, different, collective projects that reduce--and someday, hopefully, end--our reliance on inherently violent, abusive institutions. You're reading one. Meantime, in the event you're interested in more than your immediate circle of friends, elections are virtually the only time when most people even come close to paying attention to most of these issues. And for those misguided bastards who insist on voting anyway, we think folks should have a different perspective and source of information than Mindy Cameron or Dan Lewis. Do with it what you will.