People's Choice

People’s Choice - Oil on Canvas - 20 x 32 inches (51 x 81 centimeters)

I recently finished this painting - a picture of this year’s national elections here in the states. Though it could just as easily portray many previous elections, both here and elsewhere.

You may already be familiar with this artwork thanks to it having been published this last week by Activist Post, Off-Guardian, and Winter Oak, where Paul Cudenec wrote to go along with it Vote for Nobody, bringing our attention to the candidate Nobody, who looks substantially better than the other candidates.

I’ll use this as an occasion to share an excerpt from Lysander Spooner. This is from his essay On the Trial By Jury written more than 170 years ago in 1852 (Note: I broke the original long paragraph into four for easier reading):

“Neither is it of any avail to say, that, if the government abuse its power, and enact unjust and oppressive laws, the government may be changed by the influence of discussion, and the exercise of the right of suffrage. Discussion can do nothing to prevent the enactment, or procure the repeal, of unjust laws, unless it be understood that the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them.

Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Besides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the enactment of new ones that are equally so. The second body of legislators are liable and likely to be just as tyrannical as the first. If it be said that the second body may be chosen for their integrity, the answer is, that the first were chosen for that very reason, and yet proved tyrants. The second will be exposed to the same temptations as the first, and will be just as likely to prove tyrannical.

Who ever heard that succeeding legislatures were, on the whole, more honest than those that preceded them? What is there in the nature of men or things to make them so? If it be said that the first body were chosen from motives of injustice, that fact proves that there is a portion of society who desire to establish injustice; and if they were powerful or artful enough to procure the election of their instruments to compose the first legislature, they will be likely to be powerful or artful enough to procure the election of the same or similar instruments to compose the second.

The right of suffrage, therefore, and even a change of legislators, guarantees no change of legislation --- certainly no change for the better. Even if a change for the better actually comes, it comes too late, because it comes only after more or less injustice has been irreparably done.”

Enjoy the artwork, enjoy this episode of the election show, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Prints of the painting People’s Choice are available here, and the original here.

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