This whole "The world is looking to us! We must count every vote!" thing: most of the rest of us on LJ (privileged Westerners that we for the most part are) live in countries where every vote is always counted.
Yes! And everytime I hear about voting machine mishaps I just wonder why they don't have X-in-the-Box like normal people. :D
This is a great post. Thanks for writing it. It sometimes irks me how Americans- not usually my American friends on LJ, but what I read in papers or on message boards- seem to think that the US is the only country with freedom or rights that are enshrined in anything, the only country that has democracy at all and the only country that has the right to say what *is* democracy. I really get bothered when they talk about how proud they are that they had to fight for their freedom even though they themselves had nothing to do with it, and somehow my being Canadian isn't as valid, even though the loyalists who really funded Canada had to *leave their homes* or face pretty rough persecution if they wanted to continue doing what they believed in. And at the end of the day, neither me or the average American had anything to DO with our nationalities. The only people who had to fight for anything are asylum seekers and immigrants, really.
I think it is important to show the world that not all of the West is like the US, especially when it comes to who we vote for and how they treat the planet. I don't know how people can be happy with a representative government that hurts everyone else just so they can feel a *little* 'safer', or just because they don't want a gay couple moving in next door.
no subject
Yes! And everytime I hear about voting machine mishaps I just wonder why they don't have X-in-the-Box like normal people. :D
This is a great post. Thanks for writing it. It sometimes irks me how Americans- not usually my American friends on LJ, but what I read in papers or on message boards- seem to think that the US is the only country with freedom or rights that are enshrined in anything, the only country that has democracy at all and the only country that has the right to say what *is* democracy. I really get bothered when they talk about how proud they are that they had to fight for their freedom even though they themselves had nothing to do with it, and somehow my being Canadian isn't as valid, even though the loyalists who really funded Canada had to *leave their homes* or face pretty rough persecution if they wanted to continue doing what they believed in. And at the end of the day, neither me or the average American had anything to DO with our nationalities. The only people who had to fight for anything are asylum seekers and immigrants, really.
I think it is important to show the world that not all of the West is like the US, especially when it comes to who we vote for and how they treat the planet. I don't know how people can be happy with a representative government that hurts everyone else just so they can feel a *little* 'safer', or just because they don't want a gay couple moving in next door.