Don’t vote, for equality

Political power in the Western society has increasingly been concentrated into the hands of a cultural elite. An elite educated in the same clutch of schools, raised in a similar environment and exposed to the masses of humanity only insomuch as they have managed them, or viewed them on holiday – that is from afar.

These politicians are only incidentally beholden to the will of the people in that they require a periodic legitimization of their position in which the people are invited to select between a number of political parties that differ only in their minutiae (albeit minutiae that have been exaggerated to an almost mythological degree by the societal media that is itself beholden to the same corporate oligarchs that ultimately comprise and rule the political class).

The people are left wholly free to choose between two parties that sit so closely on the spectrum of possible political pathways that the choice hardly merits the name. Yet so conditioned are the people by years of media bombardment that they are unable to see their options beyond the narrow band or, if they can, have been so propagandized that they instinctively demonise the options without considering them with a clearness of mind.

It is the method by which power may be removed from the corporate oligarchs and giants of media and returned to the hands of the people that is the subject of this investigation. Do not suppose that returning the power to the people will solve our problems, or even make them easier, but in a society that is proud to call itself a democracy it can only be a move toward emancipation to actually enforce the existence of a true democracy in which the victories and failing of the people can be attributed to the people and not to their masters.

Not wanting to engage in armed revolt, that risking the many positive things that exist within our society I advocate the use of ‘negative participation’. This involves the direct and wholly legal participation in the voting process by the silent majority of voters who, in the majority of western countries, do not engage in voting at all. We shall, for want of a better term refer to them as the silents.

The lack of engagement in the political process of the silents has been investigated on numerous occasions and without definite outcome. What has been ascertained is that the silents are the only consistently growing (a)political group of our age. It is often said that their lack of motivation to vote is due to disengagement with a system that they see as being unable to provide meaningful change in their lives. Undoubtedly this is one reason in a complex morass of reasons that prevent citizen engagement with politics but it is a reasoning that rings true and which could be exploited to create genuine change.

Step One: Through constant campaigning and education convince a considerable number of silents to attend polling stations and to deliberately spoil their ballot papers by way of a protest against the system (a none-of-the-above vote). We shall call this subgroup of silents the protesters.

It is vitally important that the Protesters spoil their ballots and do not vote. To vote is to deliberately pass your political power to an organized party headed by representatives of the corporate oligarchy (that is the oppressors). To spoil the ballot is to withhold your political power from them whilst advertising its potential availability in future negotiations. The former leaves you in thrall to your enemy, the latter leaves you as potential master of your own fate.

Step Two: As the turnout of voting electors continues to decline (as it has been trending for over fifty years) the percentage Of potential voters represented by the Protesters will increase. The political classes will then be faced by a stark choice. At some point an opponent advertising a new form of government, one anathema to their personal power, will arise and harness the protester votes to gain legitimate power and revolutionize the system. This will never be allowed to occur but to stop it the current parties will have to approach the Protesters and offer concessions to their needs and wants. The Protesters can then leverage their withheld political power as a mass and offer support to a political party on the basis of their suitably guaranteed promises and not on the basis of a feudal allegiance to a given party often based on the politics of their ancestors and an allegiance to a coloured flag. Political power so given can just as easily be taken away and re-pledged to an alternate party or withheld in its entirety until the parties compete amongst themselves to once again safeguard their privilege within the system by releasing more power to the people.

In this way the people can slowly retake their position as the equals of their current masters. It will take time, certainly decades, potentially centuries, but it can be done.

 The tools to return equality to the people are inherent in the current power system provided we can organize to use them.