From: phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone)
Subject: Re: Not Voting
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 00:03:54 GMT
Organization: Generally in favor of, but mostly random.
Distribution: ba

In article <1992Sep9.181045.19156@odin.corp.sgi.com> zursch@whizkid.wpd.sgi.com (Captain Coffee) writes:
>MIKE ROYKO
>	
    >I've never been bothered that droves of people don't vote.
    >Not once have I ever written a column before an election
    >urging people to exercise that right. But what does bother me
    >is when I'm forced to listen to some bore explain to me why
    >he doesn't vote. Many non-voters find something profound and
    >important in what they don't do. It happened again a couple
    >of days ago. This time it was a man about 30 years old.
    >Unmarried. Big-paying job. High-rise apartment. Cushy
    >lifestyle. Self-ordained ladies' man. ``I'm not going to
    >vote,'' he said, without being asked. ``And I'll tell you
    >why. It doesn't matter to me who wins because it doesn't
    >affect my life. It has nothing to do with the way I live. It
    >won't change my life in one way or another. ``It may be
    >important to people in the news business because they make
    >their living writing about elections. And it is important to
    >people in politics because it has to do with their egos. But
    >to most of us, it is irrelevant. Regardless of who is in
    >office, nothing changes. At least nothing that affects me
    >personally.'' Well, I made a mistake. I tried to answer him.
    >I began to talk about the Vietnam War, and how we might have
    >avoided or shortened that bloodbath had we given more thought
    >to the kind of people we sent to Washington. Had there been
    >more brains and less bluster in Congress, we might have been
    >out of there sooner. Who knows how many lives would have been
    >saved? But then I remembered that, despite his age, he had
    >managed to avoid being touched by the war. He came from that
    >fortunate upper-middle-class background whose members were so
    >adept at finding loopholes in the draft laws, the generation
    >that left its social conscience behind with the abolition of
    >the draft. Thus he, like so many of his peers, had spent
    >those bloody war years increasing his knowledge of rock music
    >and savoring the pleasures provided by the birth control
    >pill. So, from his safe perspective, it wouldn't make much
    >difference who held office then, since the war didn't touch
    >him, as he said, ``personally.'' Then I began a small lecture
    >about the '50s and the '60s, and how it mattered a great deal
    >to the black people of this country which candidates happened
    >to be elected to public office during those times. Not only
    >to Congress and the White House, but to the state
    >legislatures, and even various sheriff's offices. All of that
    >monumental civil-rights legislation, a century overdue,
    >wouldn't have come about if there hadn't been enough people
    >in public office who believed in it. And there were times
    >when it was a close call. One or two more boobs could have
    >swung important votes back a few decades. Luckily, the right
    >kind of votes were there. And this resulted in dramatic
    >changes in the lives of millions of people. But then I
    >remembered that he wasn't black. He grew up in a wealthy
    >family in a wealthy suburb, and his closest contact to blacks
    >was when the hired help came to clean the house. And the
    >closest he ever got to a place like Selma or to people like
    >Bull Connor was when they might have caught his eye on the
    >color TV set that undoubtedly stood next to his teen-listing
    >telephone in his air-conditioned bedroom. So he was right.
    >Those who held office in those years weren't significant to
    >his lifestyle. I didn't even bother to talk to him about
    >things such as worker- safety laws that have been passed over
    >the years, laws that make it less likely that a workman might
    >have his hand chopped off by a factory machine, although we
    >still have a long way to go in that direction. That, too,
    >doesn't affect him personally. In fact, I couldn't think of
    >one argument I could give him for voting, because his reasons
    >for not voting were unassailable. As he said, none of it
    >touched him personally. He is part of the me-first, me-
    >second, me-forever, me-me-me-me generation. The fact that the
    >outcome of an election might affect others doesn't matter to
    >him, because those people don't matter to him. What I dislike
    >most about these kinds of insulated me-me narcissists is that
    >when things get rough, they are the first to whine that
    >somebody ought to do something to straighten things out.
    >They're the first to look around frantically for somebody,
    >anybody to take care of them. But in the meantime, he's
    >getting his, and what happens to others is of no concern. So
    >he sneers that politics is outside the mainstream. What he
    >doesn't recognize is that he is the one on the outside.
    >Hopefully, he'll stay there.

Ah yes -- I used to live in Chicago. MR writes very readable columns.
He's a terrible wrong-headed asshole, but he does write nice columns.
About socialism, like federal health insurance and why there must
be mandatory helmet laws and gun control and speech control (he
doesn't think you should be able to buy Hustler) -- in short, a classic
statist.

Notice how the imaginary guy that doesn't vote is pictured as an elitist,
self-centered slob.

The inference is obvious -- why, if you don't vote, you must be selfish.

Of course, he doesn't mention that the lowest voter turnouts are in the
lowest economic classes, with the upper economic classes having the
highest (proportional) turnouts.

Naw -- that'd wreck the pro-Socialist imagery. He used to have a great
sopabox every election year in the '70s about how there oughta' be
a law requiring you to vote.

Considering what Cook county politics were like (the Dailey machine),
it was, well, beyong ludicrous.



Anyway, nice emotional imagery.

But consider this -- he seems to want to blame the ills of "what went
wrong" on peoiple that DIDN'T vote!!!


Seems to me that the people that VOTED the shitheads into office
are to blame.

Now how did THAT get all backwards??? Hmmmmmm?


-- 
phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone)

"I can't get no satisfaction ...", M. Jagger
"Yeah, right, tell me another one Mick.", P. Ronzone

These opinions are MINE, and you can't have 'em!  (But I'll rent 'em cheap ...)
Newsgroups: ba.politics