The Democracy Ration

It's hard not to get depressed around election time. In 2005, the choice was between an overtly racist party led by a vampire, a flapping husk of a party led by a war criminal, and a party led by and supported by over-earnest students. Little has changed since then, although to believe the papers, everything has changed. The nearly unconstitutional TV debates (well, in so far as Britain has a constitution, they seem to be at least against the spirit of the thing) have flipped many people disillusioned with the Husk Party and the Racist Party to support the Earnest Party, or so hype would have us believe. Behind all this looms a giant recession the size of which the majority of people have never experienced - with the concomitant 'necessity' of mindblowing cuts. It's enough to make you emigrate, either to some politically dubious nation where your accent might render you charming (Australia, the US...) or to another astral plain altogether.

Why is this the case? My argument would not be that politics is inherently worse than it was. Many politically engaged people hark back to the days when the parties were really parties - when the Tories were openly racist, rather than tacitly, when Labour supported strikes and provided free silver spoons to every poor unfortunate in the land, and when the Liberals were so bland that you had to take speed to prevent yourself sleeping whenever they opened their mouths. This is bollocks.

I would wager the reason it's depressing is that the act of voting, in Britain particularly, actualises your powerlessness. This is your democracy ration, handed out every 4 to 5 years. It won't really do anything, but it will do more than the other elections you vote in every year or so - Assembly, Council and European - which are, scientifically, less important than votes cast towards X Factor contestants. You can vote for the people you agree with, but it's wasted. Go home, watch Dimbleby for a few hours, sleep, then go back to having less than no power, just as before, but with a different monkey dancing on the organ.

Or you can agitate, educate and organise. It's the only real political choice you ever have to make, and the only one that matters a jot.