There's an old and not particularly funny joke, about a wealthy man that comes to a high-end travel agency and asks for something special. The salesmen show him all their prospectuses, but he's already done everything they can offer. So the salesmen get on the Internet, call all their colleagues and people they met at trade shows, call in all sorts of favours to find the most exotic, unconventional, remarkable destinations and activities imaginable. The wealthy man still complains that he's done it all before. Finally, exasperated, they give him a globe and tell him to point to any place on it, and they'll arrange a trip for him to that exact spot, and find something interesting to do.
The man studies the globe for ten careful minutes, then looks up and says, "I'm terribly sorry, I really am - but would you happen to have a different globe?"
I am reminded of this joke every time I hear someone say that they are not going to bother voting in elections.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Good one. Reminds me of Molly Ivins' explanation about why one should vote, even when confronted with an unsavory lot of candidates:
"...we ...are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother? Oh, it's just that your life is at stake."
Hah. Very good.
I'm quite stunned at how often I hear people here state that we shouldn't even bother having elections here in Austria, considering how they never change anything, and none of the options are ever good. Seriously, WTF?
It's especially annoying in a country which has proportional representation. Where you actually CAN create your own party and make it into parliament if you're not happy with the current options - something which has been done before, actually. Even outside of Estonia.
It is only back in 1987 that the last demonstrator died, on the street, for democracy. Let the politics be messy, but there is no way back. Back means they did not get either travel visa nor a free elected government,
here
Post a Comment