If you are fool enow, like me, to watch television or listen to the radio, you likely know that actor/comedian Russell Brand has a book out he'd really like you to buy entitled "Revolution." The book, like Mr. Brand himself, is quite smart, delineating the ways our society has gone terribly wrong and will, left unchanged, go terribly dark.
Small surprise the work is as incisive as it is, seeing as how Brand cribbed most of the serious ideas in it from mentors like Naomi Klein and Thomas Piketty, something he freely admits. I largely approve of Mr. Brand's media tour to promote the work, as he's very good at reducing the complex and important ideas of such people into bite-sized bits the average viewer/listener can (maybe) grasp.
HowEVER... there is one aspect of Mr. Brand's book and promo circus that strikes me as utterly puerile and naive, his constant reiteration of the tropes that voting is futile and there is no difference between major parties.
When he is confronted with the abject untruth of this proposition, as he was the other night on Lawrence O'Donnell's show, Brand offers bromides like "become active and collectivized in your own life" while ignoring the real instances in which the party in power does matter (O'Donnell's example was reproductive choice, the Supreme Court and the partisan balance of the Senate).
The problem with Brand, and many like him, is that he is, by and large, correct. The working conditions at your job are as much determined by whether or not you and your fellow workers are active and collectivized as they are by any federal regulation.
But the idea that the government regulations and programs that do help come about magically by individuals at the bottom of the pile, no matter which party is in power, is absurd on the face of it.
Thus it is that, while watching Mr. Brand's circus this past week, I've found myself wanting to hear an opposing voice. Not some stuffy establishment type there only to mock Mr. Brand, or some respectful if skeptical sympathetic media personality like O'Donnell or Tom Ashbrook, but someone as well-read, articulate, verbally unstoppable and bona-fide bad-boy credentialed as Mr. Brand himself.
Imagine my delight this morning when stumbling upon Polly Toynbee's Guardian interview with none other than His Rottenness, John Lydon, on the very subject of Mr. Brand's book and "voting is futile" message.
The interview is on unembeddable video and no transcript is offered, so I'll do a bit of transcribing of my own to give you a taste. Still, I urge you to watch the whole bit. It's tasty.
Toynbee: Tell me what you think about what Russell Brand said.
Lydon: The likes of someone like Russell Brand coming along and saying something so damned ignorant is absolutely spoon-feeding it to 'em. Your individuality, your sense of right. You must not forget, a hundred years ago, who could vote here? And to have that so easily, flippantly ignored... You have to vote. You have to make a change. You're given lousy options, yes, but better that than nothing at all.
Toynbee: Young people in this country don't vote. Under-24s vote least. The old vote most. The result is that all of the money goes to the old. This government which has cut everybody' else's benefits has protected the old, has given them more money, and there's Russell Brand, telling them that's okay.
Lydon: Condoning that. Well, that's all wonderful, because their education... you're going to be the stupid of the future. You're not voting, you're not contributing, you're not even non-contributing. You're just demanding that you be ignored. And that's not very smart at all.
...
Vote. Stand up and be counted. I've always voted.
Toynbee: Have you ever voted Conservative?
Lydon: No.
...
And I don't understand this new lot...
Toynbee: UKIP. Anti-immigration, anti-Europe.
Lydon: Yeah. Morons.
I heartily urge you to watch the whole of it, and to share it with your younger friends, particularly those who listen to what Mr. Lydon calls novelty records made before they were born as they Sharpie circled A's onto their journals.
More than anything else, I hope they catch the bit where their cultural icon says, emphatically,
"Vote. Stand up and be counted. I've always voted."