Column:
Americans should learn and think before voting
Published Sept. 22, 2008
Although a Japanese invention, the Nintendo Wii epitomizes American society. It's a hybrid of every lazy person's favorite tasks: watching TV, playing video games and expressing opinions without thought or effort. There's a free downloadable application for the Wii called the Everybody Votes Channel, in which users can vote on whether they like cats or dogs better, or whether they value electricity or running water more. Simply put, Everybody Votes Channel is the pinnacle of both laziness and democracy. Without so much as standing up, you can use a remote to voice your opinion and see where you stand in comparison to everyone else whose opinions are just as uninteresting and inconsequential as yours.
For some reason, having an opinion about everything has become an essential part of living in a free society. Democracy, obviously, gives people a lot of choices. That's kind of the entire point. But if the Everybody Votes Channel proves anything, it's that we are obsessed with expressing our opinions on absolutely everything, no matter how stupid, uninteresting or uneducated our opinions may be.
With the presidential election drawing nearer, the implications of this seem scarier than they usually do. Everybody from Diddy to Howard Dean to kids standing around Speaker's Circle is trying to get you and everyone you know to vote. One of the aforementioned people even threatens that you will die if you don't vote.
But before encouraging people to vote, maybe we should encourage them to learn. It seems that, somehow, we've all subscribed to the idea that our election would be better or more representative of the people's will if everybody votes in it, which is akin to saying that McDonald's is a fantastic restaurant because everybody eats there.
We have a chronic problem of mistaking quantity for quality, which is why Wal-Mart thrives, why infomercials always offer a second product absolutely free and why lots of people who shouldn't be going to the polls will, come Nov. 4.
Just as quality food can't be ordered, cooked and consumed in less than three minutes, quality opinions can't just be espoused without any forethought.
I've recently come to realize that I have no stance on whether I think abortion is morally reprehensible. I can understand how it is a bizarre genocide but also an alleviation of the strains caused by rape or other misfortune. And I'm not sure how to reconcile that morally. I think it should probably be legal, if at the very least for the sake of preventing a black market for abortions from springing up, but it seems like an issue where I really don't have the right to be telling other people what to do when I can hardly discern what I think.
And it's absolutely baffling to me that such a high percentage of people have such strong opinions on this issue, when it seems to me that it's actually pretty convoluted.
So I guess I'm here to be the anti-Diddy. You're going to die whether or not you vote, so please don't vote unless you feel like you have convictions that are based on policy, and not whether someone is black, or whether someone would make for a hot vice president.
I'd certainly rather live in a society where only 60 percent of the population votes, but they vote well, than a society where everybody votes on everything but knows nothing about anything. As Americans, we have the right to eat Big Macs for breakfast and vote for as many American Idols and presidents as we want, but that doesn't always mean that we should.
