“Why do we need an inauguration? Bush is already in office!”

So fumed my grandfather on the telephone earlier today. Being snowed in today with the rest of the DC-area, he had apparently caught too much TV coverage of the preparations for tomorrow’s “big day.”

I’ve avoided thinking about it as much as possible. It seems generally irrelevant to my life. It is just another day of celebrating big government in Washington. Throwing the president-elect a big party (actually many parties) seems appropriate to the coronation of the king. The rock concerts and fancy balls make it seem like all of America is celebrating. This too should be expected from politicians who want to make it appear that the government is the people.

While people do vote, the government is hardly the people. The government and the people are separate entities. The former has near absolute power to deal out death and destruction. The latter humbly asks to be let alone.

The government serves the interests of those who hold power and those who influence power. Elections are at best crude tools for representing the vast and varied interests of individuals. How are the interests of the millions of Americans, who did not vote for Bush, represented by the outcome of 2004 election?

Vlad the Cynical Liberty Penguin took a crack at this question back in April 2001.

Dear Vlad,

Q: Do Votes Count?

A: Votes don't count; people do!!! You can determine the value of your vote by using the following formula, keeping in mind that V = vote and P = party: (v of P1) +(v of P2) + (v of P3) + (v of P4) + (v of P5)= the will of the people.

I'll use an example that's so simple you won't demand a recount. Let's say it only takes 100 votes to elect a President (about the alleged margin of victory for George Bush). The following could be a plausible scenario: (v of P1 = 3) + (v of P2 = 5) + (v of P3= 2) + ( v of P4 = 30) + (v of P5 = 60) = the election of the P5 candidate!! Yay!!

Let's say that party 2 is the party of freedom and liberty and party 5 is the party of statism (i.e. Democrat or Republican). By voting, for the freedom candidate you can actually elect a statist as an expression of your will!!! Yay!! If you are as excited about this as I am, flap along with me!!!

Citizens must take a great deal of time from their chosen professions, or donate great sums of money to political action committees to be heard. Voting isn’t enough.

Wait, you say, there are people who will protest the inauguration… Inauguration Day is an opportunity for the citizenry to speak out.

True, and I am not advocating giving up. But some forms of protest are better than others.

One proposed protest is to stage a boycott of consumerism. A forwarded e-mail I received argued:

On "Not One Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in
Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer
spending. … During "Not One Dime Day" please don't spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases.

… "Not One Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the
people of the United States of America, not for the international
corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and
funnel cash into American politics.

However, this kind of protest just inconveniences our own selves and our fellow citizens.

Snopes.com refutes the efficacy of One Dime Day:

But the target of this boycott isn't an entity that has the power to bring about the desired resolution (i.e., the government) — those who will be economically harmed by it are innocent business operators and their employees. These people have no power to set U.S. foreign policy or recall troops from Iraq, but they're the ones who would have to pay the price for this form of protest, incurring all their usual overhead costs (e.g., lighting, heat, refrigeration) to keep their businesses open and paying employees' salaries, all the while taking in little or no income. (And no, it doesn't all even out in the end — restaurants, for example, aren't going to recoup their lost business through boycott participants' eating twice as much the next day.)

So, I won’t be celebrating the inauguration. But, neither will I be protesting in the streets or restricting my purchases. I will go to work and when I come home I’ll be attending to Free Liberal business. Just like any other day.

-- KDR