Defending the Wicked Part 2: The Non-Voter

The non-voter is the guy who sits and masturbates to watching porn on election day when the voters go out to vote. I am an example of a non-voter, I have never voted once for anything in my life. I never had a desire to vote and probably will never vote in my life. Not for the mayor, not for the governor, and not even for the presidential elections. The non-voter is often pressured by the voters to go and vote. The voters, which are the majority of people, look negatively at the non-voter. They see the non-voter as some lazy guy who complains about the current situation of the country and never does anything. The voters also get angry at the non-voters, they tell the non-voter that they has no right to complain because they never vote for anything in the first place.

So what is the non-voter allegedly guilty of? People would say that in the democratic process the people are in control, and it is the people who decide what the country should be doing, the non-voter is an insult to the democratic system by not participating in this process and therefore has no right to complain. The non-voter is also sometimes seen as a lazy person who does not vote because he is lazy. All of these "evils" of the non-voter are not evil, as we will see soon, and the non-voter can actually have a heroic element to him, the arguments of the voters against the non-voters are build upon fallacy after fallacy.

Let us begin with the first fallacy. And this is a fallacy about democracy, not about voting itself. The fallacy is that in the democratic system the people are in control. Well, consider this question that I always ask in regard to democracy. What would happen if you buy and sell LSD and end up getting caught? Does this counter-example show that you are not in control? Or consider this. What if some guy moves into a middle of nowhere, gets a few wives, smokes marijuana and ignores paying taxes because he does not use them for anything? What will happen with such a guy who wants to mind his own business and be left alone? He will end up enslaved in an iron cage known as "prison". My question now is very simple. How does this imply that the people are in control? You are in control over what phone company you want, if you do not like one, you switch to a new one or just stop using the phone company and that would be the end of it. You are in control over what kind of food you can buy. But where are you exactly in control in the situations I described? Here is one last example to consider. Suppose 1/3 of the population likes soda but hates fast food and smoking, 1/3 of the population likes fast food but hates smoking and soda, and 1/3 of the population likes smoking but hates soda and fast food. Under this democratic process, where the people are supposedly in control, no one would be able to smoke, drink soda, and smoke cigarettes. That is your idea of "control"? I would be scared to find out would you meant by "oppression".

Here is a thought experiment to consider. A plantation slaver owner comes up with a new system of slavery. He owns about 200 slaves and he allows them to vote on certain things that he approves of. The slaves can vote and decide what they will start having for breakfast, they can vote for the kind of clothes they can wear, they can vote for what kind of vacations they would like and so forth. The slave master quickly learns that this is a better system of slavery than other ones that masters have been using because in this democratic system of slavery the slaves imagine themselves to have some control. What is most interesting is that the slaves start to fight among themselves rather than being angry at the master. Because one group of slaves want one thing and another group of slaves want another thing, so they fight over with one another about who is right, rather than both being angry at the master for owning them in the first place. Let me ask you a very simple question. Under such a democratic system as the slaves in control? Of course not. They have no control at all. Control, for the slaves, would be to leave the plantation if they so desired. Now imagine that there is a philosophical slave. The philosophical slave does not vote. His slave friends get angry at him and pressure him to vote. Telling him that he must vote for what is right. But the philosophical slave refuses to participate. He says to his brethren that the whole issue is not voting but the system that is the problem itself. And he cannot vote because he does not support the system of slavery whatsoever. Would this philosophical rebellious slave be evil? No, we would all say how brave and intelligent he is for standing up for what is right.

Now compare this scenario at the plantation with the current democratic system. How are they different? Sure the plantation farm example is an over-exaggeration of the current system. But even though it is an over-exaggeration it has a lot of similarities. The slaves cannot keep their labor, they must give a portion of their labor to the master. If the slave was to refuse to give his labor he would suffer punishment. In our current system the state demands a portion of our labor. If we were to refuse to we would also be punished. The slaves are prohibited from certain lifestyles, such as drinking or gambling. The citizens in the democratic system are also prohibited from certain lifestyles, such as drugs, or even gambling. The slaves, if depressed, are not allowed to commit suicide, that would be a lose to the master. The citizens in the democratic system are likewise not allowed to commit suicide. The slaves never agreed to slavery. The citizens in a democratic system never agreed to the rules that were mandated upon them from high above. The slaves cannot leave the plantation farm, if they would try to escape they would be punished. Can the citizens leave the democratic country? Not really. They need permission to leave. They need papers and these papers can only be approved if the state was to give permission to leave. And in some cases even if people do leave the state still demands a portion of your labor back to them outside the country. That is not leaving the country, it may feel like you left it, but upon inspection it is not. Leaving means you say "enough of this I want to leave", not when you need permission to leave in the first place. I ask you yet again, where are the people exactly in control?

Now suppose that there is a philosophical citizen. The citizen is against human ownership in all its forms. The citizen is against using violence to solve social problems (98% of the time when the state does something it does it through the barrel of a gun). This citizen also tells his fellow citizens that it is not them that are the problem but the system as the whole that is the problem. It is not the Republicans or the Democrats, but the whole power structure itself that we must object to. What this voting process does is turns us against one another rather than keeping us unified. Further this philosophical citizen says that for these reasons he does not want anything to do with this system. Can such a citizen really be called wicked? No, he is heroic. And this is exactly where the non-voter is actually a hero than a villain.

Let us address one last fallacy and that is that the non-voter has no right to complain? Why not? If you vote someone into office and he messes everything over then in some way you are responsible for the problems that were caused, thus you have no right to complain. I, however, who is a non-voter, have all the right to complain that I want to.