Is It Ever *More Moral* Not To Vote?

[go4tli]

I don't care which politician you blame for the problems in society.
I'm just sick of reasoning like this:

"You voted for Candidate One? Then *you* are responsible for every
evil act and/or stupid decision made by Candidate One. *I* refused to
vote for Candidate One, or for *any* candidate, because they're all
too similar -- corrupt and insane to a man. Therefore, *I* am not
responsible for *any* evil act or stupid decision made by *any*
politician. You are polluted. *I* am pure."

I do not accept that claiming a *lack of responsibility* is a virtue.

Of course, the corollary is just as false: "You *didn't* vote for
Candidate Two? Then *you* are responsible for every evil act and/or
stupid decision made by Candidate One. ..."

I'm not attacking abstention from voting itself. There are actually
valid reasons not to vote: For example, the lesser of two evils
doesn't automatically have the right to jerk you and your loved ones
around. I just think that using this abstention to claim some kind of
*moral high ground* -- a high ground defined by *inaction* -- is
weird. *Especially* in a two-party system in which a plurality of
votes is the only thing that counts, and *especially* when (compared
to other systems) our system is not between left and right, but
between centrist-right and far-right. (The extremes are as far as
ideas can stretch and still be somewhat feasible, not as far as people
can express and still get elected *in this country*. There's also an
important difference between "moderate" and "reasonable", and it's
good for one to determine which one is more important when it comes to
voting time.) It's not optimal, and it's not the way I'd like it, but
it's what we've got, and we have to deal with it.

For the record, I voted in the last elections, and I intend to vote in
the coming one, though I can also understand why someone might not
want to. It's just that I hear these lines a lot around election time
in personal discourse, and I think they're specious. How about you?

"Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of
your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond
dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to
get this." -- Tony Kushner

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing
between the disastrous and the unpalatable." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Responsible action must decide not simply between right and wrong,
good and evil, but between right and right, wrong and wrong." --
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(Bonhoeffer *again*! What are the odds?)