Democracy?

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

"But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience-we don't
need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the
electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we
haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a
sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting
booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in
the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted;
that is democracy. But if you even read what the political
scientists say-although who can?-about the voting process, you find
that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting.
You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know
there is a difference-they have one party and we have two parties.
We have one more party than they have, you see. "

-- Howard Zinn, teacher
"Civil Obedience"
http://www.infoasis.com/people/stevetwt/Zinn/


Zinn strikes right to the heart of our privacy problems, i think:
we expect our 'elected representatives' to take care of our needs
for things like privacy, but they don't.   They take care of other
people's desires to invade and exploit our privacy, because those
other people count (money, generally) and we don't.