Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/


I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
17 An Arsenal of Ad Hominems

Ugly “art” is nothing new. After all, this will not be the first time that one has heard that “ugly is beautiful”. There are a number of theories why ugly art came to be and why it has became acceptable.

In-depth explanation of ugly art will demand a book. However, in a blog such as this it is perhaps excusable to occult, caleidescope, and abreviate complex issues by “jumping to conclusions”. Thus, I believe that for the most part, ugly art is related to the so-called Tourette's Syndrome, which through another mirror returns to us as an ad hominem.

Essentially ad hominem or, better, argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker and not addressing the argument. To those who recognize the failure of logic in ad hominem arguments, the argument amounts to so much churning of air. This is why one attacked by ad hominem arguments is advised not to respond, because to respond means to fall into the trap of illogic, which may lead two or more persons not only into churning the air, but filling the air with vilifications advanced by negative self-exitation. It is a perfect illustration of  "negative freedom"  . Sometimes ad hominem slug fests a la ad hominem lead to blows and injuries.

A most curious ad hominem event occurred last Saturday with the reentry of Guntis Ulmanis, a former President of Latvia, into active political life by joining the party of oligarchs [a joint venture of The People’s (TP) and the First Party of Latvia (LPP)]. The entrenched “felt hats” have joined their forces and formed a new party, the All That’s Good for Latvia Party (VLL). Media sources reported that the public was as shocked by Ulmanis action as the media itself. No one had imagined such a possibility, given the former President’s harsh words against certain high positioned members of said parties.

One does not have to suffer from the Tourettes Syndrome and see and hear it expressed in shouted curses toward everyone who passes one by. The argument here is that Tourettes may manifest itself also as an attack ad hominem. Ad hominem attacks need not take the form of curses, but may projects themselves as ad hominem love strokes. If so, Guntis Ulmanis and his oligarch friends are stroking the public the best they know how. In short, they all are promising All That’s Good for Latvia to Latvians (excluding the Latvian Populists of course) with narry a chance that they will deliver.

Why is this blogger so negative? The reasons are several. Here are a few.

• 1. The oligarchs are not presenting themselves as “oligarchs”. They are presenting themselves as “uzņēmēji”, a Latvian word that straddles the meanings of such words or clusters of words as “enterprising people”, “business enterprises’, manufacturers, industrialists, “providers of jobs”, and above all the literal meaning of the word, i.e., ‘those who take on tasks’. The last is from the Latvian word “uzņemties”, to take on, to take responsibility for.

• 2. None of the oligarchs, and certainly not the former President, have suggested any specific direction Latvia ought to evolve toward in the future. Indeed, there is no vision of the future of Latvia other than a consumer culture and more indulgence of “negative freedom” (the word “negative” is of course never mentioned in oligarch parlance). The only direction that the All That’s Good for Latvia Party has heretofore proposed consists of

 a) deflating the currency (Shkhehle-Šķēle, TP);
 b) enlarging the Riga (RIX) airport (Shlesers, LPP);
 c) aimless economic “growth”; aimlessness (other than personal enrichment) is now as established as the favorite activity of oligarchs.
 d) While Guntis Ulmanis has spent his post-presidency years taking an active part in promoting Latvia’s hockey teams, he has no larger vision of the future than a world full of hockey. Perhaps he plans to back the Dvina-Dnepr River Canal Project, a project that may be compared to the project that built the Suez Canal. However, to realize such a project, one would have to tear down Latvia’s only hydroelectric dam on the Dvina.
 e) Maybe Ulmanis has a plan that will persuade Latvians to tearing down the Kheguma Hydroelectric Dam. It will re-expose Staburags (the Hornpost) that was submerged by the dam’s waters in the Soviet era. It may again be used as a symbol of fortitude. The oligarchs will propose a private nuclear power station to replace the dam, but suggest that the transition from hydro to nuclear be will be hid from the public eye by through the continued use of the name “Khegums”.

• 3. The oligarchs are for economic growth left entirely in their hands, which know no better path forward than the one advocated by American neo-liberals and their European allies, who have brought the world the present financial and economic crisis. Hail! ten years of the Afghan war, more wars on the horizon, more than a hundred years of dumbing down the Middle and Working classes, and raise hope that the future will never end the days of conspicuous consumption or Pop Culture.

It will not have escaped the reader’s attention that an argumentum ad hominem is being used also by this blogger. I present an example of what the Tourettes Syndrome looks like when the above mentioned “love strokes” (the Latvian “paiya” or “glasts”) I try to imitate.

My “love stroke” for the oligarchs leaves no marks of aggression. To the contrary, I wonder if the devaluation now will do what it perhaps could have done at the beginning of our “time of troubles”. I am not convinced that it is not better if left be.

The airport. RIX, in Riga is a wonderful place, especially taking into consideration that in eighty or so years the tectonic shifts of our planet will submerge it and all of Riga. A long-term thinker would have built the airport near Yelgava, which will not be submerged by the dunking to come. After the flooding is over, we may see no more than a few of Riga’s church smiles and the top floors of some hotels. Bauska may start planning now where to build the harbor for leisure boats.

As for the Daugava-Dniepr Canal Project, I would rather reclaim the railroad tracks and replace the old tracks with tracks suitable for carrying a tele-capsule-for-two. If such a modernized version of the railroad were in place today, I would be among its first users, since the Aloja-Riga railroad line is but some 14 km drive from my home, and I am spared driving 35 km to Valmiera to catch a bus. Of course, we leave our car at the junction station, and off to Riga we go. We are transported back home by the same tele-capsule-for-two (private ownership encouraged), but on the opposite rail.

It is not at all unprecedented to claim one’s vision of the future against a vision that does not exist. And it should not surprise you that I encourage you to consider and NOT-TO-VOTE. I wish everyone to NOT-VOTE, because it is only by exercising such methods that the long repressed (dumbed down) citizenry has an opportunity to radically change their community’s socio-ecologic direction, rewrite their Latvian Constitution, the Latvian Satversme, and, yes, become a real community at last.

The next to join the (anti) ad hominem movement will be America. So! Why not be a real Latvian and do it first: I-WILL-NOT-VOTE.

[Next blog, Sex and Johns Eve (2) continued.]


Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2  


If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com  or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com  

We suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs as an integral part of our argument.


THE-NOT-VOTER
5 Reneging On Democracy

If of 1000 eligible voters, 500 vote (for whatever party), but 500 do not vote, then 50% of eligible voters have expressed—as the laws stand now—a disinterest in the state. As long as the voter is not formally identified by an electronic mark on h-h (his-her) ID papers, the 500 not-voters are anonymous and are collectively referred to as nonvoters. More accurately, they are abstentionists or even better—not-voters.

If the 500 nonvoters did not vote because the government in their opinion is so corrupt that in the name of good government h-h have no choice but to not-vote, their just reasons stands to be unjustly accused of disinterest in the state and government—because there is no mechanism that allows h-h to cast a not-vote. THIS IS WHY IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT WE SEE THE INSTITUTION OF A NOT-VOTE.

If the not-vote is formally recognized as a legitimate vote (and why should it not be?), then of the 1000 eligible voters, 500 will have voted for the government, but 500 will have cast not-votes for the government. Therefore, the result will be hung elections and 2nd elections will need to take place. Because a 100% accuracy of 500 vs 500 votes is unlikely, lawmakers and statisticians can work out the percentage of “error” that is allowed and will allow the elections to stand. Of course, those of the 1000 who did not vote and chose to remain nonvoters, risk a penalty. For example, a life-time 4x not-vote will cause one automatically to lose citizenship, which will effect, say, whether one is or is not eligible for a pension and certain expensive health care.

Given that we live in the IT age, and statistics has replaced the absolutism of a simplistic ON vs OFF and YES vs NO vote—an instrument which makes the Constitution an absolutist document—the time has come to institute a NOT-VOTE. The Latvians (the country of my birth) and the world at large are certainly in a great need of it.

How is a not-vote to be instituted in a state and nation (actually all modern states and nations), where the Constitution allows for no replacement of itself? This is a problem that must be solved. Because why would one not want to change or rework the Constitution that has outgrown its usefulness or its usefulness has been compromised by its capture by an autocratic power?

As stated earlier, the IT age makes it possible for this difficulty to be resolved. If you have a voter’s card imbedded in your mobile phone or home computer, your ID, besides for being a pro-vote, nonvote, and not-vote would also register the voting public’s instant reaction on a visual graph to all questions of importance to the society as a whole. If the percentage registered a 70-80% unity on a question, the issue would be automatically put to a formal referendum (in effect a seconding) that would then be put to a formal vote 3 or 4 months later.

The problem in Latvia is how to enable a disabled Constitution. The disabling of the Latvian Constitution has been brought about by an insufficient accounting for the nature of home sapiens and a stretch too far for the ideal that not always corresponds to the situation at hand. At the present time there is no law that allows the voters to unseat the government in toto, elect an authoritarian power for an interim period (which ought to include a thorough review of the Constitution), and then return to direct elections again. We all know that it is possible to legislate for adjustments, rather than go straight toward an abstraction called “progress”, the result of which may be a great success, but also a great disaster.

The only way that this blogger sees how such a Constitutional change may be brought about with mental rather than physical exercise is by way of the NOT-VOTE. Absent its institutionalization, the not-vote has to find itself by doing it, not-voting. The percentage of not-voters ought to ring bells. Today the bells would “ring”, as they used to say in the old days, “the phone off the hook.”

By letting the people know and understand that a not-vote, if organized, is effective political action, a not-violent act, the voters may, for a period (perhaps the seven years foreseen by the Weimar Constitution) empower an authoritarian government. It would be followed by a government subject to popular vote for a seven year term 3x perhaps. Then the Latvian uncle Kārlis Ulmanis would again look over the nation’s shoulders and offer some advice.

THIS IS WHY IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT THERE BE A NOT-VOTE.

………………………………………….
The snubbing by the Saeima of Dainis Īvāns—one of the spirits of Tautas Fronte (The People’s Front), the mover and shaker of “The Singing Revolution” two decades ago—as one to address the Latvian Saeima on the 4th of May was a telling act. The 4th of May is the date when Latvia formally declared the renewal of its independence from the Soviet Union. It has not gone unnoticed that by its act Saeima told the people that Īvāns represents few it knows or it cares what they think about Latvia’s future. It knows better.
This audacious snub occurs at a time of profound crisis, one that involves the economy, finance, jobs, a roof over the head, bread on the table, and not least education. Perhaps as many as 200,000 have left Latvia for what seems a better existence, a job, almost any job. Latvians are the optimists of Europe, because if Europe betrays them by failing to find the authority to unite Europe and help Latvia write a new Constitution, there will not be Latvians long left except as residents of any administrative district.

Things have arrived to this nub because of, for one, the atrocious IMF rules. Such once were known as “bulls”, divinely inspired directives that overrode any other way or constitution, democracy including. Of course the Saeima is doing all that it is doing as a saint, except a not-vote will let it know that the people dispute its self-ratings. In short, it is time for parliamentary democracy to be replaced by direct democracy. But it can only be instituted through the intervention of an authoritarian government.

With a Parliamentary system of government and a largely disempowered president at its helm (the Weimar Constitution acting as inspiration to the concoction), the cores of parties under control of oligarchs and corporations with rights of individuals, the partidocracy sees the world through eyes all its own. Latvia as a community limps forward under the charisma of irresolution come by a severe infection with Conspicuous Consumption, even as it leaves 250,000 of its 2.3 million inhabitants sans citizenship.

Yes, I understand the problem brought by demographic death spiral to a language and a community worth its name. However, a refusal to look the problem in the eye does not make it better. A government that sulks is hurting all of the inhabitants of the country. How does a voter discomfit a government enough to get it moving? This is where the “not-voting” citizen comes in.

Twice the political system has reached a point where it has put the state of Latvia in a flower pot. The excuse the first time around was that the authoritarian rule of Karlis Ulmanis was ended prematurely (the Weimar Constitution allows the President seven years in office) by the infamous Hitler-Ribentrop pact. Though officially such a seven year Presidency is not something that is part of the Latvian Constitution, its association with the Weimar Constitution gives Kārlis Ulmanis a legitimacy by an undertow of associations.

However, what is the legitimacy of the Saeima twenty years into the renewed republic of Latvia worth, when the forces that enabled its re-emergence from Soviet occupation are become of nuisance value to it? The populist spirit behind the People’s Front no longer interests the Saeima. In fact, it is obvious that it is rather in the way.

If most of the people who are not-voters at this time by way of opinions expressed, perhaps their breath will be better spent on a march to Riga to express NOT-VOTER sentiments. Such an event could reawaken the populist spirit that wants a vision of economic development that points not toward yesterday, but takes into account the likely circumstances of tomorrow and acts.

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
One country, two systems
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8667871.stm
Bill Moyers last interview. The Populist Moment
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch2.html
Eso's Chronicles, the beginnings of my blogs
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.
Partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline  + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/