I agree, with you and with Jim. To take the argument to a slightly different dimension, let’s look at a hypothetical situation in an attempt to clarify and exemplify the current choices in front of us:
Let’s say you lived in a Nazi state and faced a government-elite-controlled election where you had a choice to re-elect Hitler, or an alternative candidate (to use a random name another poster stated earlier on this thread), Mittler.
Hitler and Mittler are the only two candidates which an authoritarian state apparatus has allowed to run in the said election. Hitler openly advocates murdering all Jews in his manifesto. Mittler says that this is extreme, and advocates instead murdering only 70% of Jews, the remainder being allowed to continue to exist in ghettos.
One line of rational thought advocates voting for Mittler: in so doing, they say, we save the lives of 30% of the Jewish population whose deaths are otherwise inevitable. It’s the lesser of two evils, and there are no other candidates who have been permitted to run. Mittler may, in the long run, be susceptible to some amount of reason and persuasion. We all know Hitler isn’t.
These people ignore the fact that in meekly voting for one of these candidates which the state has selected for you, you are effectively validating such a contest and accepting this political status quo. In voting for Mittler, you also become personally morally complicit in the deaths of 70% of the Jewish population which follows. When he then acts according to these pre-stated aims, he has reasonable cause to claim that he is acting with your knowledge and support.
The morally correct option in such a situation in surely to act as Hans and Sophie Scholl did in 1943: (a) flatly refuse to take part in such a process and (b) fight to overturn such a corrupt and evil system from within, encouraging others to do likewise, irrespective of any cost to yourself or off the odds of success.
I am not, I should stress, equating either Obama or Romney to Hitler, however much I may dislike their beliefs or policies. But I do believe such an allegory stands as theoretically valid on a moral basis.
That allegory was as close to the real truth of where we find ourselves as a nation, and what time it really is for this people than any other post yet replied to from Mr. Jim.
One truth in the allegory that both the German people and Americans today share, is that the man leading them by subterfuge wrote and said exactly what he was going to do before he got into power - and the people refused to believe he meant what he said he would do, or that such a thing could happen here.
The Ruling Class knows where the real power now lies, and they will do anything to share in it and have fingers on the money,and on the power to control us. Romney will not stop this, nor slow it down. He will be the broker to legitimize it all, even after he loses in a landslide to Obama - who chose Romney to run against.
As a Conservative once married to an abusive adulterous political party - I have suffered enough rape, abuse and humiliation by the hand of the Ruling Class leadership in the GOP. I want a divorce, because I refuse to deceive myself into believing that this time will be different than before.
I’m not insane. What I am reading and hearing is many folks who have been beaten into thinking they have nowhere else to go, no choice but to lie back and enjoy the rape thinking the alternative is worse, are proving that they are slaves. As if voting for the top spot is going to save us from the ruin already sown from years of this same old, same old.
Galatians 5:1. I refuse to be a slave and vote for the chosen vessel hand picked by the MarxoFascist to run against and think I’m somehow saving the nation by doing so. Because when Romney loses just as McCain did, we’re expected to just slink away and say - “Well, the Democracy has decided and I will just have to live with the consequences”, as if that is the price to pay for living in a ‘free’ society of Dependents. Shame on us to have allowed ourselves to get to this point when the Founders repeatedly warned us this would happen.
We need a divorce from this system, and a mindset and resolution of refusal to comply, capitulate or cooperate with the enemy on every level for every reason, whether from within us or from without, same as our forbears did whom established our Republic.
Since I concur that Zajko’s allegory is adroit, at what point do you refuse to play the game the Ruling Class has orchestrated for you to play, and seek Independence from those who would have us all in chains?