Dear Jack,
I have heard you on YouTube and other public forums profess that you are an anarchist and that voting is a suckers game which only leads to encourage people who want to be politicians and get in the way of us having a good time. My question is this: If you don’t vote doesn’t that mean you can’t complain about things?
I have heard this one before and I am always amazed when otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people say things like this, which are so patently and demonstratively not true. See I'm complaining right now, ipso facto. Your argument is like telling a vegetarian they don't have the right to complain about McDonald's--or telling a vegan they don't have the right to complain about the ingredients in anything. They're not participating in the exploitation of animals but they sure as hell want to talk about it all the time.
So, of course I can complain, agitating is how change happens. I think changing the system from within has pretty much been disproved. But it's a hard sell to most people so I try to avoid the question sometimes, especially in the last election, which was so emotionally charged. I remember one bartender during my late night rounds asking me who I was voting for and I thought we were getting along ok so I started spewing the black star line as it were and she interrupted me saying "So I suppose you'd like to live on a plantation and own slaves! You with your Johnny Walker Black! (like most bartenders she remembered what I was drinking but not my name).
I'm pretty witty so I responded with "Huh?" to which she replied, "Not voting for Barak Obama is racist!" So I say "Oh no, you misunderstood, I'm not voting for John McCain."
"What?" she threw her bar rag down "How can you not vote for John McCain?"
"Well I don't want to take votes away from Obama."
“Then why don’t you vote for Obama?!”
“I told you, I don’t vote . . .”
This went on for a while; I think we eventually did a shot together.
So as I said I usually avoid the question. During the Clinton Administration I used to just tell people I was Canadian until one Libertarian canvasser got smart and asked me who the prime minister of Canada was-"Uh, Gary Trudeau?" and then it turned out there's Canadian branch of the Libertarian Party anyway. I had to duck into a bank to avoid carrying around an armful of literature and stopped using that line.
Another convenient answer almost lost me a job a couple years ago. I was working at a major metropolitan museum with a bunch of old ladies and Nov. 4 rolls around. One of the old biddies goes "You going to go to vote after work?" and not thinking, because I'm at work, say "No, I don't vote."
She comes back with this old chestnut: "but if you don't vote you can't complain about anything! You got to vote! It's your civic duty! People fought hard for the right to vote! I’m going to march you right over there! " and so on and so forth and I look at her and I know I am not going to change this 70 plus old black lady’s mind about anything so I say "Actually Martha, I'm not allowed to vote. I'm a convicted felon."
“What,” she says, "You’re a what? What did you do?"
“Assault and Battery,” I replied “on an elderly person.”
And that shut her up and I took an early lunch feeling pleased with myself…until I returned to my desk 2 or 3 martinis later to find a note: "Please report to main office.” I'm not too worried about it 'cause I have a lot of friends in the main office and it beats sitting at my desk next to Martha so I get there and the lady who hired me, Katie Marlowe, is looking fretful holding a piece of paper in her hand.
She says “I don't know how to say this Jack but I've got your job application here and next to the question ‘have you ever been convicted of a felony?’ you clearly checked the little box marked 'No'."
I start to laugh and she looks even more worried and asks what's so funny and I say “Oh, I was just lying!”
The poor woman is about to cry and says "well then I'm sorry but lying on your application is grounds for dismissal so . . ."
"No, no, no. I was lying to Martha, I was never convicted of anything."
Her discomfort turns to anger "why would you lie about something like that!"
"I wanted her to stop asking me questions."
"The only way you could think of getting a 75 year old woman to stop asking you questions was to tell her you've been convicted of Assault and Battery?!"
". . .On an elderly person . . ." I remind her.
"On an elderly person!?"
"well, you know how chatty she is, it really disrupts my work .. ." Ms. Marlow calms down. "She does talk a hell of a lot-- alright get out of here."
I return to my desk where Martha quickly hangs up her phone which she is clucking into conspiratorially "You're back!" She sits up straight quickly. I smile. I had that job for a long time.
www.noecho.net
inthesetimes.com
