zenicurean ([info]zenicurean) wrote,
@ 2009-06-07 16:30:00
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Current music:Gogol Bordello - Avenue B

Give unto Caesar.
Voting time. Heading off to the circus soon. I'll be throwing my copper penny of a ballot at whichever random dancing monkey twitches and convulses in the most amusing manner.


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[info]dukesnorre
2009-06-07 02:28 pm UTC (link)
You know you want to vote for the pirate party. If only to confuse the old media folks.

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[info]zenicurean
2009-06-07 07:39 pm UTC (link)
Hah, that would've been appropriately lulzy. Our version didn't quite manage to get their act together in time to field any actual candidates, though. (They went out for an election night booze fest anyway.)

But, y'know, this combination here...

"Enligt den sista Sifomätningen före valet på söndag får Piratpartiet åtta procent av rösterna och två mandat i det EU-parlament som ska sitta till 2014... Piratpartiet tänker inte ägna sig åt 98 procent av det som EU-parlamentet beslutar om. Där tänker de rösta som deras partigrupp bestämmer."

... is absolutely pure and beautiful. They're not going to be the Pirates Who Do Nothing, they're going to be the Pirates Who Do Things Randomly! I just talked to someone who said it must've been an Internet poll.

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[info]Daniel [oeconomist.com]
2009-06-07 05:01 pm UTC (link)
Old Libertarian Saying:
Don't vote. It only encourages them.

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[info]zenicurean
2009-06-07 07:50 pm UTC (link)
See, this is why I take so little advice from libertarians. I mean, I'm pretty sure the person I went for paid absolutely zero attention to my vote. That they'd have bothered to get encouraged by it is clearly a hyper-individualistic conceit.

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[info]petronivs
2009-06-07 09:04 pm UTC (link)
"I'm pretty sure the person I went for paid absolutely zero attention to my vote."

Actually, no. The person you voted for took your vote as (a small, albeit) affirmation of the positions he's espousing.

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[info]zenicurean
2009-06-07 09:07 pm UTC (link)
I object. That interpretation ruins my joke.

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[info]petronivs
2009-06-07 09:57 pm UTC (link)
That's what I'm here for, to smash jokes to a little rational pile of broken glass on the floor.

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[info]zenicurean
2009-06-07 10:20 pm UTC (link)
Meanie!

Okay, so it wasn't that funny. But still.

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Vote
[info]js_africanus
2009-06-08 12:11 pm UTC (link)
Have fun voting!

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Re: Vote
[info]zenicurean
2009-06-08 12:11 pm UTC (link)
Did so. Didn't help.

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Re: Vote
[info]js_africanus
2009-06-08 12:26 pm UTC (link)
Why, did Finland elect a holocaust denier or some other right-wing nut job that Americans are always surprised to hear exist in Europe?

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Re: Vote
[info]zenicurean
2009-06-08 02:07 pm UTC (link)
The Eurosceptic-populist-agrarian types got their El Jefe voted in, which was a little disheartening and hurt my finicky, urban, CAP-busting sensibilities. It was inevitable, though. A lot of leftish folks over here have been crying tiny little tears over it, even though the guy is almost a teddy bear compared to the rabid lunatics some of the other countries have on offer now.

So nothing that I wasn't already braced for, I suppose. It's more that everyone saw the basic result coming miles away. The only thing that surprised me was that the Swedish party kept a seat, while the Left Alliance lost theirs. I'd have thought the sad state of the economy would've kept the hardcore left-wingers floating.

Edited at 2009-06-08 02:11 pm UTC

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Re: Vote
[info]js_africanus
2009-06-08 02:23 pm UTC (link)
The Eurosceptic-populist-agrarian types....

Sounds like a bunch of tossers. Let's see if I can work this out:

Euroskeptic: They want the benefits of a federalized Europe, but they're too selfish to accept the costs.

Populist: 1. They like mob rule and the lowest common denominator, as long as they think they're leading the mob. 2. They like to bitch about what America, China, & Russia do, as long as they don't have to do anything themselves.

Agrarian: They want you to pay through the nose for subsidies to support overfed Euro-farmers and starve underfed African farmers.

How close am I?

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Re: Vote
[info]zenicurean
2009-06-08 04:08 pm UTC (link)
Something a little like that. Half of them probably just want out of the Union. The other half are perfectly aware just how much that would suck, and want to preserve something called a "national agriculture", which I guess means "We like subsidies" in practice. They're also not keen on foreigners. Got together with the Christians in the elections. Think tough, conservative nationalist types.

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Re: Vote
[info]zenicurean
2009-06-08 05:58 pm UTC (link)
That Americans are always surprised to hear exist in Europe?

Incidentally, I don't get why this happens. People who're surprised at Europe producing those people are clearly not paying attention. I'm a great fan of the European project -- the common market, this whole novel idea that Germany and France could go for a few decades without blowing each other up and everything, that sort of thing -- but commenting on the comings and goings of some of my fellow Europeans is occasionally like... well, like talking about senile old family members who've been locked up in the attic because they'll eat the curtains and defecate in the flower pot if they get loose.

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Re: Vote
[info]js_africanus
2009-06-08 07:50 pm UTC (link)
...[talking to Americans about European politics is] like talking about senile old family members who've been locked up in the attic because they'll eat the curtains and defecate in the flower pot if they get loose.

Some possible reasons:

*Our primary & secondary education systems have become more about feeling good than learning well.

*There's probably a lot of stuff you know by virtue of growing up and living in Europe that you take for granted. For example:

__A lot of history from awareness of different national or ethnic personalities

__All your damn kings & queens, what the hell do they do? Why haven't you shot them yet?

__Calvinball makes sense; Parliamentary governments are bizarre fantasy institutions that operate with neither rhyme nor reason. If we try to imagine a member of the House of Representatives becoming President just because the sitting President retires, our heads would explode. But isn't that how Gordon Brown got into office? And how can governments be dissolved or toppled, especially by crazy-assed lunatic-fringe groups? It's like a circus without a ringmaster, and all the clowns are on speed.

__We hear about right-wing nut jobs in European politics, but we never hear of any effects from them. Bush gets elected into office, and suddenly nobody in Africa can get condoms, and even with our system of news "coverage," we manage to hear about it. We never hear about the effects of major policy decisions in Europe.

__We know that European farmers & fishermen like to get up and riot every so often, and by all accounts it's vaguely political, might be for fun, and is grass-roots, so political figures don't figure into it, apparently.

*Living in the States, it's hard to really grasp what's out there. You could spend half your life learning a language and still not be conversant because there's nobody to talk to, and five years out of school, ordering beer and asking about the toilet is pretty much all you remember. We can drive 3,000 miles in one direction without passing a check point or border crossing of any sort. We can't grasp the breadth and diversity of European politics; we don't have any sort of analog, and the fall-back is to the individual states as part of the USA, and it becomes natural to think of Europe as being relatively homogeneous, like us.

*Our news makes no effort to cover politics outside the States, except for Israel. Even BBC America spends most it's time telling us about ourselves.

*Because Europe as a whole is politically left of us, we probably just assume that a right-wing European would be a moderate in the States. We hear about people getting arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged for denying the Holocaust, so how right-wing can someone actually be?

Anyway, that's all off the top of my head, with out editing or anything. So if I said something rudely, it was purely by accident. If I did, I apologize!

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Re: Vote
[info]zenicurean
2009-06-08 11:27 pm UTC (link)
I dunno, actually. Most of the time my experience of Americans is that they're perfectly soft-spoken, well-educated, and knowledgeable about both the history and politics of the European continent. The vocabulary is certainly different, sometimes much different, and I suppose there's a certain lack of nuance there every now and then, but in no sense can it be more than I myself presumably lack when I'm talking about US politics, which I naturally have no first-hand experience of. (I've occasionally put too little emphasis on the Federal nature of the US government structure, for instance.)

But yet, I do suppose I often come across this... let's call it an alien optimism about European countries that I can't entirely put my finger on, which does lead to a sort of surprise when the European far-right comes up. But this is the continent of Jean-Marie Le Pen as much as it is the continent of anyone else. Maybe all that jazz simply doesn't get reported.

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Re: Vote
[info]js_africanus
2009-06-09 12:26 am UTC (link)
But yet, I do suppose I often come across this... let's call it an alien optimism about European countries that I can't entirely put my finger on....

Well, the grass is always greener over the septic tank! :^P

I'm kidding! I think that for a lot of Americans, there is an alien optimism about Europe. Many of us have our fantasy images of American expats living in Europe, at whatever time suits our tastes, and can't stop dreaming being there themselves. Many see how Europe is left of our right-wing center and fantasize that "liberal" Europe will provide a foil to the neo-McCarthy douche-bags we've got running around here. And I bet there's a lot of self-delusion, pretending there's a civilized, just place out there that we can retreat to in our daydreams, and that bleeds through into our into our world view.

I, for one, know next to nothing about Finland, but you offered me a good job and a work visa, I'd be out of here so fast I'd have to buy shoes at the airport.

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