(Voting = Violence) = Dangerous Leftist Idea
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Adam, I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. I comprehend your argument, it's in the realm of existentialism. No, voting is not existential violence perpetrated by the voter.
Yet, a vote is powerful, and by wielding that power in such a way wherein the end result will be violence perpetrated on an unwilling participant; that would make the man or woman who voted, collectively responsible for the end result.
If one subscribed to your argument, then if someone hired a hitman to whack a guy, he wouldn't be responsible for the hit, because he didn't physically do the thing.
I've got to disagree, but I'm not saying that this is a simple. A vs not A issue. It's more in the murky middle, because the government doesn't care if we consent or not.
This is government:
They like to put people in impossible positions. Where your damned if you do, and damned if you don't. It's not snowflakery to think that voting is violence.
People who think voting is violence are the people who don't want to choose who Neegan will kill next, because they know that their vote is a powerful endorsement.
I'm sorry you don't like metaphors, but it's an effective way to communicate, and I don't see anything wrong with it.
When you said: "There is an incredible opportunity that we have, that through the election process; withdraw our consent from the state, and ensure a peaceful, orderly, responsible transition to a voluntary society."
What you want people to do, is vote you as leader of the State. Maybe if they vote you in, you can do some of these things. Maybe you can do more right, than you do wrong. I question weather or not the (not)President would have the power to nullify decisions made by the other coequal branches of government.
Congress makes the laws, which are bought and paid for by powerful private interest groups. Lets just take one issue, Marijuana. How would you legalize Marijuana if congress makes the laws, and they are a coequal branch that you have no power over?
hmm. You're changing the goalposts with the "responsible for" thing.
If you put a hit out on someone, there's a causality between your behavior and the ensuing violence, so it's correct to hold you responsible for what happened. But still, your behavior (of the soundwaves going thru the telephone or whatever) was not the act of violence.
Similarly, when you make an expression of voting, it's not an act of violence.
Allegedly, perhaps, the government actually responds to what a person votes for? (It would be on you to demonstrate that this is the case.) In this case, ya, then you'd hold people responsible for what they caused the government to do. But that doesn't mean their behavior was the act of violence.
(And I don't think you'd truly find a connection between making a vote and how the government acted. I know if I were to go to the fire station and select someone's name that I don't think my conscience would feel any burden by it. I'd just feel like I wasted my time.)
I hear you @full-measure. I guess for me I think about all the systems that are currently in place. Take for example marijuana the way it is now. It’s still federally illegal, and Trump’s guy seems to have a hard on for enforcing this ancient law to persecute people who use this herb. In my mind the people who voted for Trump endorsed his future actions / and lack thereof. So when some young kid goes to jail for having weed and it ruins his life. It can be directly correlated to the fact that someone voted for Trump, and that Trump failed to do the right thing. I guess, I'm just the type that doesn't make endorsement's lightly. I see voting as vouching for someone, and my conscience is on the line if I vouch for someone and they make horrible mistakes. I would feel responsible for those mistakes, because I can see the interconnectedness and causality of my choices. Maybe i'm looking at it too deeply, whereas someone else could easily compartmentalize it. It's kind of in the realm of the butterfly effect, where I am coming from.
My conscience would, because every act government does and everything government has done, and is going to do, is done by violence or the threat of violence. Everything it has, or everything it pays for it has gotten through violence or the thread of violence. I would not be the tiny part of bringing or keeping that in the world. But it's my personal opinion of course :)
I don't make endorsements lightly either.
I also don't vote, and even shiver at the idea of mis-clicking 'like' on a bad facebook post that I disagree with.
But whether any of this is technically an act of violence is a different question.
I don't like describing something as something that it isn't as a tactic to encourage people not to do it. So my only issue is over the technicalities, and I basically share all of your thoughts in terms of not wanting to endorse people who may do bad things etc.
I guess I also wonder this:
Who do you think is more responsible for state violence, the diehard statist (watches cable news, believes all the typical things) who didn't bother to go vote, or the anarchist who was bored and lol'd his way thru the voting booth?
I'd say it's definitely the first.
Which seems to nerf how connected voting is to the state's behavior.
I'm not sure the state is so much responsive to the votes people make as much as it's based on what's in peoples' minds and what they're currently able to get away with.
Hello thanks for the reply.
It's debatable yes, most people have never thought as how far their belief makes the continuation of violence of their belief system, go on.
I'm not sure. Can you blame an indoctrinated cult member, who was born in an echo chamber, for whom this awful system, is just "what is"?
It's not about the blaming, for me it's about making people aware of the belief.
I can tell you who I find most responsible, the police and the army, they bring the actual violence in manifestation.......... in reality.
I think the politicians have their own agenda and only "listen" to the people if it happens to match their agenda or to get more power.
It's very much the belief in statism that keeps it going, without believers, no
legitimacy for the state and it's hired mercenaries.
I can see how you might think that voting is not violence, because if you compartmentalize the physical act, it seems relatively harmless. However, in voting, what you are doing is giving one man the power to command and control the military, which was paid for with the money that was stolen from the American people.
The American military has been killing people overseas in acts of aggression for quite some time now, and it’s doing so for business purposes, which is why all wars have to come with a false pretext, because our wars are always dishonorable ones.
I guess when I stack all those dominos side by side, that’s how I come to that result. I’m not trying to get people not to vote for Adam, I just want them to see the whole domino effect from a bird’s eye view of voting in general.
One example is, let’s say the exit polls were um not going well for the LP near the end of the race. The worst case scenario in my mind is if Adam only has 8% of the vote, and doesn’t drop out and endorse someone, it could directly result in the worse of the two evils prevailing.
So in this sense, there is a danger that the good will of Libertarian voters could be used to directly benefit the worst case scenario candidate. In my mind Libertarians and conservatives (with Trump as the conservative candidate) have more in common with each other, than they do with Democrats.
So if they were divided and ruled without a backup plan, then a vote for the LP could in essence eliminate votes that would have prevented a worse case scenario. It's all very complex when you wargame what could potentially happen. As far as your question about who would be more responsible. That's a very difficult question to answer. If I had to guess it would be either;
or
I know that voting is not supposed to work like this, I know that when you vote you are supposed to vote who you want to win. However, when dealing with multiple horses in the end phase. If people got divided on candidates, that division itself can potentially influence the end result.
Oh, I wasn't trying to blame anyone. The question was in terms of "does X cause Y", it wasn't meant to bring 'blame' into the mix.
And yes, even if they're a vehicle for evil, I agree that we can and should recognize that they were taught things that aren't true and it may not be so easy to just snap your fingers and get out of the spell.
I agree, I don't think they care what people vote, it's more just whatever is optimal for them as individuals or coordinated interests.
In some ways I almost feel like voting when you don't really mean it would (if anything) be bad for the state, because you're sending a signal of misinformation (rather than helping them keep track of how many people aren't buying it) 😀
I know :)
It's not easy for sure.......haven't tried the finger snapping though..............lol
Well thank you for your thoughts and the nice exchange :)
Unrelated but you don't have a recent blog post I can reply to...
In recognition of being one of my top 20 loyal followers, you've been upvoted and followed, thank you for taking the time to upvote and comment on my posts and your contributions to the steemit community.
@adamkokesh: The idea that voluntaryists need to vote for a leader on a national level to change things is just oxy-moronic. The system is inextricably and intrinsically founded upon and dependent upon violence for its very existence. The idea that this system will "let you in" to destroy it and make it suddenly "nonviolent" defies any sort of sound logical thought process there is.
I just posted about this, in fact, but am not commenting here to link bomb or plug said post. I am only commenting here in the hopes that the principled, budding anarchists who are already changing and decentralizing things don't get caught up in this election hype sensationalism suffering a diversion of resources and time for a pipe dream.
Even if you should, by some miracle, become president, the plans I have heard you describe for "dissolving the Federal government" are all top-down, centralized plans, to be headed by yourself and a group of selected "custodians" who will manage who gets what, and how everything is to be broken down. This is not a voluntaryist approach at all, as it necessitates making vast claims over property miles and miles away, and does not permit those land owners, communities, and individuals with most direct demonstrable link to the properties, land, and resources to decide what to do with them. This is, essentially, an application of force via magical mandate.
Voluntaryism does not need a leader in the sense of a statist figurehead such as a "president" or even a "notpresident." Nor does the violence-based system of "Democracy" need to be legitimized.
Folks here on Steemit are already changing things. And it is happening in a direct, principled, and non-violent manner. You should look around a bit and see what I mean. Tons of stuff going on here, that is real, grassroots change, and not some big "campaign."
I can't believe it needs to be said that anarchists don't need a president.
I agree with what you're saying, and it's well expressed.
Point of order, though: it's kind of a spin-off from Adam's main topic, which was whether or not voting = violence.
You can be correct that voting and political action are not the right path to voluntaryism (and I think you are), and Adam can still be correct that it's not an act of violence.
Like dressing sloppy might not be the best way to impress your boss, but whether it technically breaks office policy was a different question.
I think what people need to understand, and I've come to realize this moreso since Trump has taken office, is that the president is not all-powerful. He can't just snap his fingers and end laws that he disagrees with. Waging influence over the legislative branch to do the right thing is tricky business.
If he wants to dissolve the corporate United States, one might wonder if the shareholders have any say in this. If so who are they, and how does he get their approval? Maybe it is a pipe dream, but if it's not I think the practicality of it needs to be fleshed out. Including probably some of the more occult facts of the corporate nature of government.
Maybe it's because I'm a little drunk, but your comment seems contradictory...
For me, though, there's no such thing as no government. So if you're trying to say voting out everyone so there's no government... well that's how you get Neegan.
If voting is violence... I mean, the reality is that there's no life without violence.
Really... there isn't. Even if you're a vegan you're killing plants to live. Democracy is the process of trying to give everyone a voice, while the natural order is that the physically strongest would govern.
I'd much rather give everyone a voice.
Problematic, sure, given the number of idiots out there... but better than us all being slaves to whoever is strongest.
Hello @telos!
Imagine if you will that you are having a disagreement with a friend on where to eat lunch at. So you both decide that in order to settle the matter, you’ll have a coin flip. You choose heads, and your friend, he chooses tails. If tails wins, that means that you must shut up and enjoy those shitty bean burritos, even though you really wanted to eat pizza. If you are an honorable person, that’s exactly what you’ll do, you’ll shut up because you consented in advance to the result of the coin flip.
This is how they manufacture the consent of the governed; they first provide an illusion of choice, and get you to try and choose, but it’s mostly a rigged game in the first place. The system is set up in such a way that only extraordinarily wealthy candidates will make it to the final two. This is because people tend to drop out, and endorse the candidate in their party who has the best opportunity to win.
If you cast a vote for President, and your candidate loses, then that means you lose your right to complain about the actions of the victor. I agree with you that violence is a fact of life, and there will always be a Tyrant trying to lord over others. I just personally don’t like to be responsible for participating in the process that got him into power.
That’s my mini-rant on how voting can deplete your spiritual mana. Ever notice how every election cycle all candidates almost universally advocate that people get out and vote? Think of things in your life that you wouldn’t flip for. Now compare those things to the presidency. It’s probably less dangerous to flip for the things you wouldn’t flip for, than it is to flip for the Commander and Chief of the U.S. Military.
I do agree with you that violence is very much a part of life. I personally have no qualms about using violence in self-defense, nor should anyone else. The problem with the leaders that tend to be elected is that they will use the collective mana of the people, and pay the military to commit violence outside the purview of the non aggression principle.
It’s almost like that scene in the matrix that describes people as a battery for the machines. It’s a very spot on analogy. Anywho, it's something to consider. Enjoy your drink!
That's not true at all. I complain a LOT about Trump, and many Republicans complained a lot about Obama.
Way back when I first joined Steemit someone came up with a great quote during a discussion, and I should have written down his name so I can credit him but it was essentially:
"Democracy is the worst system that's better than all the systems that came before."
Hmm... I butchered it, it was definitely better worded... I'll have to go back and find it some day.
Basically though Democracy isn't necessarily great, but everything else we've tried was worse... sometimes a lot worse.
And it isn't as rigged as you think it is. In fact, Republicans actively try to prevent certain groups from voting and gerrymander the fuck out of their states to make sure the vote goes in their favor. If it were as rigged as you think it is there would be no need to do that.
Ever notice that all these conspiracy theories about both sides being the same come from right-leaning people and groups?
Well, I look at both sides being very similar when it comes to the business of war. I'll be shocked if the day ever comes when a Republican or Democrat decides to shut down the war machine, and closes the bases overseas.
I'm about as far right as you can get. All the way to the libertarian end of the spectrum.
If you participate in the vote, you consent to the result. If you consent to the result, you can complain technically, but it was of your own doing, the voters help to bring it all about via their participation in the process. You took a very important decision, and decided to flip for it.
It doesn't matter if you voted for Fiji water and ended up getting, either Pepsi or Coke in the end, as the act of voting is demonstrating that you preemptively consent to the result.
It would be entirely different if we were talking about voting on specific issues, but honestly what we're talking about here is voting on who gets the ring of Mordor.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.. Rinse and repeat. I don't think anyone should get that ring. In fact, I think we should throw it into a volcano.
If you said: punch me in the arm as hard as you can, and I did. Then the initial ouch factor would be reasonable, but if you continued to complain about it, it would only look foolish, because you knew better, or should have.
This ancient practice of statism, is collective stupidity. I don't know if humanity will ever learn. Our lifespans are too short to learn from it, and allot of that can be attributed to statism as well.
voting for any form of violence (which includes government), be it with your dollar, with a dot on a piece of paper or straight up with your direct behavior is wrong no matter what.
But voting against it is always right..
Are you voting for violence by voting for Adam? that's the question.
You make a good point, and pose a good question. You know, I don’t think there has been a President in the history of the United States that hasn’t used the military to kill someone, somewhere. It’s hard for me to believe that if Adam got in; in his attempt to orderly dissolve, that he’d be able to change the status quo. But if he does, and is able to pull that off, then all the more not-power to him.
Maybe something to consider. Every tax dollar the government gets it get by thread of violence or the use of violence if people do still not obey.
The president can, as head of the executive branch, instruct subordinate agencies to not enforce certain laws. Both the president and state governors have done this frequently throughout history. Think of Obama, and now Trump, refusing to enforce immigration law against "Dreamers," for example. (From what I understand, Kokesh would go further and refuse to enforce any law, but at any rate, it does have precedent.)
This is like saying the head of the most powerful family in the mafia would let someone “into the family” openly spouting that they will destroy said mafia. It’s just an absurd (and not in a good way) proposition. Local change is better.
It would be interesting to see, for sure, how the established structure would react if someone like Kokesh got elected, speaking purely on the mechanical level. Would people in government agencies revolt? The military? They are all about to be out of a job, after all. But then if Kokesh "disappeared," whoever got the spot after that would clearly have no legitimacy (inasmuch as any president has any legitimacy).
If Trump were Coca-Cola in the next election, and the Democrat was Pepsi, Adam would be water. He'd have to convince the majority of voters that they should drink water on that day because it's more healthy. If he fails, and diverts too many people from Coca-Cola, then Pepsi might win it. Innit?
Thank goodness we never ever have to entertain the thought that Adam will ever be president.
The head of the most powerful family would definitely have the guy whacked. Kind of like what it appeared that Obama was trying to do to Trump, politically speaking. Trump's run really did unmask the power that the shadow government has, and the scary part is, they didn't even make any real moves against him yet. Their still playing softball. I think they are worried about making a martyr of him. That would really set them back. Not that I agree with many of the things that Trump is doing. It's just interesting times is all.
Hmm.. okay so um.. I think most people with respects to weed have troubles with their local government. It would usually be the City-of-a-State that would be applying the force of government, unless of course it was on Federal property. That being said, I don't think the President can instruct the State to not enforce the Marijuana laws, unless of course we're talking about a Federal Marijuana law.
True, but a state governor could do the same thing and instruct their subordinates to not enforce a state's marijuana laws.
Good point @nocturnal. I'm not sure how that one works out. I know in the days of fast and easy money the President could then hold federal funding to State programs hostage, if they (the States) don't comply with federal laws.
The whole thing has become an overblown mess of corruption and bribery. Whereas if what you say is true, and the state is not dependent upon federal funds. Then the people shouldn't have to be concerned with the federal law unless they are on federal property.
When you want to Flag them but see their Steem power lol
I don't know what the creators were thinking about when they came up with flagging. It’s almost as if they wanted to simulate real world violence. Flagging wars ensue; it's an ugly aspect of the platform. It's like some kind of weird voodoo you take a dollar out of your pocket set it ablaze, and someone else's wallet starts on fire.
It basically brings out the worst in people. It also has that might makes right factor in it which discourages people from engaging in free form debate, or honest dialogue. Steemit is strange, and probably has kinks to be worked out in that regard.
I have a feeling though; because of the rampant censorship in Fakebook, Tweeter, and uTube that we'll be seeing a large influx of popular uTubers join Steemit. Allot of my favorite uTubers already have. The Sheeple come next, and with it they'll bring massive amounts of followers.
LOL imagine if pewdiepie joined, that would cause a redonkulous trend.
If Steemians worked hard on it, we could probably influence uTubers to first mirror their content here for added earning potential, and then they would naturally just stop posting at uTube out of disgust as they see their videos get demonetized day after day. Either that or they'd get their followers so interested in the platform that uTube would see a drop in numbers, which would directly equate to a drop in ad revenue.
Now that's an idea, flag uTube via a collective effort to convert Tubers to Steemians. It could be called the Steemit Challenge! So much potential!
For an extremely lucid, logical, articulate and well thought out rebuttal--and I would say even refutation to and of, many of the ideas presented in this Kokesh video--please listen to parts one and two (or at the very least, the last half hour of part 2) of this "Bad Quaker" Ben Stone podcast.
https://steemit.com/politics/@badquakerdotcom/voting-practical-realities-and-moral-truth-parts-1-and-2-podcast-episodes-199-and-200
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting. - Charles Bukowski
Hello, help please
How do you post on dtube, I have tried countless times, with no results.
Must I use a PC before I can access it?
Like voting even matters anyway. Regardless of who we elect, our political leaders rarely ever work for the good of the American people, and people should stop counting on politicians to magically change their lives for the better. People are going to do what they want regardless of the law anyway. While I think its good to talk about the issues facing our society, its literally gotten to the point where people's lives are consumed by politics. The end result is people losing focus on their own lives, when they could be working to solve problems on their own, and without the reliance of another worthless political promise that never comes to fruition.
YES!
I understand the sentiment - voting do not matter in many instances. However, the past presidential election did matter a great deal.
It really struck a chord with me when you were talking about reality and the idea of metaphors. I've been playing around with that idea a lot lately. I think it becomes very toxic to the human condition when you start applying abstract concepts to your reality to the point of abstract ideas governing the way you view reality.
Please see my comment about this on Adam's previous post. I am not a leftist, and I do think that the notion that voting = violence does have some merit, but it's a complicated issue. It's certainly more complicated than labeling it a "leftist idea". Leftists love voting, that doesn't even make sense. I haven't watched this video yet, but am going to right now.
WOW a lot of great philosophy in the comments. I live for that sort of thing. That being said, I think that the argument can be summed up rather succinctly. Voting is tacitly violent, but not necessarily explicitly violent.
My evidence for this is that (assuming the voting system is functioning and not fraudulent):
A is your wants, B is the wants of the first option on the ballot, and C is the wants of the second option.
Because people must vote in the presence of ignorance of many issues and ramifications, A necessarily cannot align with B or C. Therefore:
A~B and A~C (let B and C be Donald and Hillary if you wish).
Voting is done in ignorance because it is having your say in a non-specific way—that is, you agree or disagree to a proposition or person, although neither the proposition nor the person are influenced by you. Thus, you are not having your say, because you are not engaging in a discourse that is commensurate with your wants, needs, and the world that you live in. This is why money and markets exist! Money allows us to live a lifestyle that we want, because we have an endorsement given to us in exchange for our labor. The government steals a share of this endorsement.
Because the price mechanism is constantly finding the optimal price (to the extent the given market is unregulated), spending and earning are far greater uses of personal power than voting ever could be. Assuming crypto is a success and the medium of exchange is freed from government tampering, then the issue of ignorant consent could be solved (using US dollars is not only using a poorly informed price mechanism, it is also tacitly violent).
It seems a lot of us agree something must change in government, it's just the "how" we are all struggling to answer.
I believe Adam's strategy is a bit naive as most others have already pointed out in the comments.
Personally, I think the answer is staring us in the face. We don't attempt to vote out corrupt government officials, we don't wage war against the government, we don't move away and start over from scratch.
We simply create a new decentralized government system based off of the core foundation any nation needs. "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
We already have steemit, honestly, how much different is a blockchained tax system that follows the basic rules our nation was built upon?
We build the system, we move to it, and we just ignore the old corrupt system entirely. Stop paying taxes to our broken government that wastes our hard earned money on useless things. For example, $700,000 to determine if Neil Armstrong said "That's one small step for man..." or "That's one small step for a man...". (Yes, we actually paid that much to determined if the word "a" was said or not in this famous quote.
A decentralized tax system would alleviate a lot of the corruption in our government.
Furthermore, I'd suggest we pair our decentralized tax system with a decentralized crowdfunding system (which I believe have already been built). Then when some leftist argues our tax dollars should go to feeding the poor, we can say, "Sure, here is the crowdfunding page for funding the nation's food stamp program. Go donate as much as you want! I on the other hand, need my hard earned money to feed my own family. Maybe next year I will have extra money to donate to the poor."
Now we have an uncorruptable tax system that ONLY requires tax money for the nations actual NEEDS and all other WANTS can be crowdfunded.
Steemit is not decentralized. If it was the whales wouldn't wield the majority of the power, there'd be no need for witnesses, in a decentralized system power is evenly distributed.
I am one of the many who feel that voting is a waste of time. I learned this in 2012. With that being said, I will vote for Adam to relay the message of liberty and freedom. Whether or not my vote matters, well we shall see. Americans are waking up and the ones who are already awake are fed up!!!
How is it liberty and freedom if you still have to participate in the current "democratic" system? Nothing free about being forced to vote for one of two or three people who were picked by only a handful of other people. And do you really think there would be any significant change if Adam were elected? There is a mighty long list of candidates and their promises...and elected officials with promises unkept.