Dissident Veteran For Peace: Voting Rites and Beltaine's Fire on Election 2008

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Voting Rites and Beltaine's Fire on Election 2008

A popular yard sign in my community says, "Change We Can Believe In—Obama '08." I want to take seriously this notion of the presidential election as an act of faith, as a sort of religious exercise.

Richard A. Horsley has written extensively about "imperial religion." That is, "the construction and cultivation of religion primarily as individualistic spirituality, identity, and meaning [that] tends to leave the operations of political-economic power uncontested and acquiesces in the commodification of religious expressions" (see Religion and Empire (2003), p. 130). In this same vein, he talks about how Christmas "has become a central expression and embodiment of American imperial domination, an imperial religion" (Religion and Empire, p. 109).

So, here we have the related ideas of religion being reduced to private expression and the public expression of a religious holiday being turned to imperial ends. What of our secular political acts? Can they take on the trappings of religion? In "To Vote or Not to Vote," I wrote, "Politicians see voting as a means of granting legitimacy to the government." If that is correct then it would make sense to construct voting as, in some sense, a religious rite. I think that's the case but I am not going to develop that argument, for the present moment at least. Instead, I want share some illuminating remarks of others.

The two quotes below come from comments to "Ten Reasons Why I’m Not Voting" on Jesusmanifesto.com.

Voting is more rite than right. I see it as a participation in the cult of the empire, a symbolic bowing to the State's claims of sovereignty over this land. —Sara Harding

Voting is the central liturgical ritual of the false and idolatrous religion known as liberal democratic governance. In fact, voting is sacramental. The purpose of voting is not to choose government or alter policy (in liberal/industrial democratic government, that has already been done), but to mystically link those governed to those who govern, to make them one body, the body of the nation-state. —Charles Featherstone

All right, there it is and I am going to just leave that hanging there. To close things out I want to share below "None of the Above," the recent video by the anarchist Celtic Hip Hop Fusion group, Beltaine's Fire with Emcee Lynx on lead vocals.