Arguing against casting a ballot

By Anders Loven-Holt

I probably won't vote in the 2008 presidential election.

It isn't because I'm politically apathetic or, on the contrary, because my favorite third-party candidate withdrew and my sophist honor won't permit me to support a conventional alternative.

Chances are, in fact, that I will have a strong preference between the two major candidates. I just won't bother voting.

And while this sort of ambivalence undoubtedly exasperates the dedicated civil servants who will be quick to espouse the collective importance of individual votes, I believe that there are more valuable forms of altruism than obtaining an absentee ballot.

For instance, not adding one more halfway-informed voice to the inane, socially-divisive partisan debate that perpetually intensifies before an election.

Given the opportunity for rational discourse, we invariably use it to emphasize our differences and remind ourselves that we're political enemies.

Why do we feel the need to qualify every new opinion or idea we hear in a partisan context, in order to embrace or dismiss it before actually considering it? What relevance does its source have to its validity?

Given that the pretense for any election is positive change, we devote an absurd amount of effort to defending our previously obtained positions.

Worse, many are non sequiturs in regard to our other beliefs or anything we should logically care about, the result of whole-hearted and half-minded subscription to an ideological cartel.

I suspect that many of us, after affiliating with a political party on the grounds that it represents a greater or more important share of our beliefs than any alternate, have made the subtle yet crucial transition to a complete presupposition of that party's tenets.

It is now clear that immigration, the economy and the war will be the main topics of the borrowed conjecture that is haphazardly slung across classrooms in the ensuing months.

However I would argue that most students at this university will be more affected by the school alcohol policy, the mud puddles caused by an overzealous sprinkler network and the quarterly menu variations at campus food venues.

So what compels us toward arguments over issues of which we have little understanding, and, in many cases, in which we have very little stake?

It was only recently that gay marriage was presented as a life-or-death issue on the verge of being irrevocably embedded in our country's most sacred document.

Why doesn't anybody seem to care about it anymore? Why did everybody seem to care so much about it in the first place?

In lieu of any obvious social or legislative resolution, one can deduce that it was an issue introduced solely to polarize voters and was no longer marketed once it ceased to be effective.

Are we really so credulous that we eagerly and earnestly engage in whichever debate is dangled before us, without bothering to consider its relevance?

By refusing to critically examine our beliefs, we have created a routine in which our position on any given issue is dictated by our affiliation, rather than rational thought and empirical observation. Furthermore, the consequent circumstances could not be less conducive to a search for truth -- an objective that should form the basis for any discourse, political or otherwise.

This situation is not an unfortunate accident, of course; the success of any political party lies in its ability to create solidarity within its ranks.

However, the success of the party is then at odds with the interests of its individual members and those of a rational nation.

Winston Churchill, the celebrated British statesman, once proposed that democracy was the absolute worst form of government -- except for everything else that had ever been tried.

While it may not be possible to avoid consolidating our many divergent interests into a few political parties -- and, despite my non-endorsement, important to vote for one -- it is possible to be deliberate, critical and cautious when we do so.

Anders Loven-Holt is the sports copy editor for The Santa Clara.