Wanna see a mushroom bench-press a sack of potatoes? Just lie on your stomach and think about our great democracy in action. Cliché or not, elections are all about erections. Voting is like going to a swingers' party. You know you're going to get fucked, you just don't know by whom yet, so you might as well get into the spirit of the occasion.
The campaigns are in full swing and every politician has been run up a pole, the best place for them, I think. All the streetlamps are hung with colourful posters of our would-be leaders, smile down at us beatifically, the patron saints of chaos, gridlock and noise pollution. Below them, at the side of the road, the people who are supposed to be receiving this bounty of leadership and guidance hold up cruder, but much more honest, cardboard begging-letters of their own. If God was just (and not majorly concussed from the beating he's just received at the hands of Mel Gibson), the poster money would be spent on the people in the street and the thieves in suits would be electioneering with homemade slogans. There are appropriate examples at most intersections.
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS - "I don't do crime."
NEW NATIONAL PARTY - "Will do any work for small change."
VRYHEIDSFRONT PLUS - "Buy my biltong."
INDEPENDENT DEMOCRATS - "Single mother. Too many mouths to feed."
(I couldn't find one for the DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE, but I'm sure they'll simply grab some at random. Who cares if the messages conflict as long as they bring in the votes?)
Unfortunately, along the way to paying their deposit, a few of the fringe parties fell by the wayside. Among my favourites were THE WORKERS INTERNATIONAL VANGUARD LEAGUE, which is a communist party that seems to think the actual COMMUNIST PARTY is a claque of freemarketeers who are all having guilty wanks over posters of Milton Friedman. Their symbol is a hammer and sickle with the number 4 superimposed. That's approximately the number of supporters they have. Still, they could probably beat up the GEMINI PARTY. I tried to find out what this party was all about, but I never got the chance to speak to either of them.
There are whole slathers of parties calling themselves "Christian". Somewhere in the dyslexic witches' brew of fringe parties, you can always find our lord. The ACDP, UCDP, CDP and, for all I know, the ANC, PAC and PJC all make use of the big "C" to denote something very important. Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of The Christ" (Not the catchiest of titles, but then you could hardly call it, "Beating the Crap out of Jesus", could you?) will no doubt have an effect on the vote too. I wish the opening of the film had been delayed until after the election, because the last thing I want is a herd of god-botherers, stoned on guilt, let loose in a voting booth. That's not democracy, that's the Middle East, where the only qualification any voter needs is to be fanatically devoted to an unpronounceable cause, the intellectual equivalent of circumcision from the neck up.
Just to get a head start on the hate mail this post will undoubtedly receive, I DO NOT believe in a Jewish dark force called "Oy Vader". On the other hand, I DO believe that, if God was so offended by a little bit of skin at the tip of your dick, she would never have invented it in the first place. And I think the only way to solve all the murderous bullshit is by applying mind over martyr. There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Get over yourselves.
But, for all my doubts about the process, voting is still sexy. I can't help feeling semi-tumescent about our 10 years of democracy. I look at Iraq and think, "Thank fuck, the Americans never came here to help us out." We did it! And on Wednesday we're doing it again, not as racial blocs, but as individuals who can start to look one another in the eye, the millions of little pixels that make up the rainbow. Soppy, hey? But fucking brilliant, I can assure you.
For a nation of racists, we were remarkably colour-blind. How else would you explain Tretchikoff?
Cheers!
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