Fuck the State...

Hard to believe it.

After nearly 8 years frustration with the President, 4 years of resentment over a lost election, and 2 years of such complete disaffection with the electoral process that I dismissed not only the American Democratic System, but the notion of government itself, in the last 24 hours I have cast a vote, gone to a rally, and been photographed in a newspaper with democratic colors flying high.



Fuck the state.

I want to tell you a story, but your going to have to bear with me for a bit.

There is a paradigm in political thought called Social Contract Theory. To answer the question of why governments are ubiquitous throughout historical conditions, many Classical Liberal thinkers explain government by contrast with an hypothetical society without it. Social contract theory imagines a "state of nature", a society without government, without laws, without taxes, and without political structure in general. By imagining this kind of society, most social contract theorists conclude that government is not only a good thing, but also an unavoidable thing that results inevitably from social interaction.

In the evolution of liberal thought, social contract theory was essential. It made government a must have as well as a should have. Because they see the "state of nature" as an impossible contradiction, Liberal thinkers take the existence of government as a prerequisite to any discussion of its merits.

The preeminence of government in society is so important to Liberal thinking because taking government as given confines any critique of politics to an argument about how to limit governmental power. Modern Democracy developed as a way of making society line up closer with normative ideals, but democracy is only good in contrast to other government structures. Democracy is often called "the best of many bad systems," but it is only the best if the system is taken to be given.

Well, if you been unfortunate enough to run into me in the last several years, there is a good chance you have been exposed to "Fuck the State."

I might have yelled it at you along like a paranoid psychotic. I might have chucked it at you along with a glass bottle, like a belligerent drunk. I might have ambushed you with it at the end of a stoned political rant.

"Fuck the state" was belligerent, it was primal, and was the meaningless party line of a washed up college student. It was an excuse not to get involved, and it was the grandiose delusion that my resentment mattered. But for the last few years, "Fuck the State" has been my life. Though adolescent, it was a personal rejection of my relationship with government and in a way, it was my miniature state of nature. Though it was delusion, "Fuck the State" allowed me to separate myself, if only in my psychology, from the political structures around me.

Well I guess it all came to an end yesterday. It seemed like an accident, like the ultimate irony, but I found myself on a bus heading home, to cast my vote. If I ever thought I could separate myself somehow from the government, by putting in a vote, I made myself once and for all a part of the system.