Do Not Vote
A tragic development has recently come to my attention with regard to American politics and civics. Young people, still riding the coattails of their moral victory with president Barrack Obama’s election, are using frightening rhetoric when someone confronts them about their politics. Amazingly, rather or not their perceived opposition agrees with the president is secondary; rather or not said person actually voted is becoming the primary argument.
For some reason, it has entered into American discourse to denounce “complaining,” casting it in a negative light as mere bitchings of unhappy emo kids who need a job. Where did this come from? Complaining about government is as American as Thomas Jefferson, apple pie, and Jackie Robinson. When it’s uncovered that someone with complains about the nature of government did not vote in the recent election (as arbitrary as the when is), their opinions are discarded with an even more rabid vitriol.
“You didn’t vote? Then you have no right to complain!”
That is what one can expect to hear if one is merely making jokes about government or even attempting logical debate of the pros and cons of American government. A sense of moral superiority graces the minds of those who vote–especially if they voted for the winning candidate–that makes debate with those who use their once-in-four-years “privilege” as evidence of their unerring civic virtue impossible in their minds. What is lost to them, however, if the fact that someone can conscientiously choose not to cast a vote as a means of voting.
Conditioned to believe that voting is quintessential to American involvement in politics, “zealous voters,” as I will herein call them, seem to spend less time weighing their individual political ideas than participating in the rigged drama of American presidential elections. Not voting, to them, is having a cap busted in them from P. Diddy; it is a disgrace to the founding fathers, the Civil Rights Movement, and all of those who fought and died to preserve our right to “free” election. They brandish t-shirts threatening observers to “Vote or Die!” offering no illusion of an alternative to voting.
But there are always alternatives. Voting is, I argue, just as “immoral” as not voting–especially if one conscientiously objects. Voting is not only submitting yourself to more of the same, rigged system that most probably have big objections toward, but it is also a joke of its former self, no longer the huge event where Americans gather to discuss, debate, or even come to blows. Civic involvement in America has turned into a spectator sport.
Casting a vote for, say, John McCain is no more or less “moral” than casting a vote for Barrack Obama. Why? Let us take a look at the varying philosophies of each candidate against the realities of their political maneuvering. John McCain promises, as did George W. Bush, smaller government, fewer taxes, and less government spending; a little-C conservative dream. On paper, Republican president George W. offered almost the exact same thing. At the end of his term, however, all that happened was our national debt skyrocketed, the federal government once again expanded to unprecedented proportions (thank you, deviously worded PATRIOT Act), and taxes were, as they always are, raised or kept the same.
Barrack Obama promised a slightly different approach. Lower taxes for the lower classes (class warfare is a common fear tactic used by many politicians), less government spending, and reduced government. Basically, it’s John McCain’s approach with a slight Marxian twist (please don’t think I’m calling him a communist or socialist, you inflammatory masses). What has happened since he has been in office? Trillions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to “resurrect” a wildly fluctuating economy, with more trillions being proposed behind a blanket of fear mongering. “The economy will die if you don’t float me another blank check!” Taxes will likely be lowered for the lower classes (unlike most politicians he at least attempts to keep promises), but the sheer amount of federal government expansion and spending during his budding administration rivals the first few years of the New Deal.
Yet, the rhetoric from both sides is the exact same as that during the Bush administration’s early years, only reversed. Democrats are scrambling to defend wanton spending as a means of aiding a “dying economy” (it’s not dying, just fluctuating). Republicans are dawning their flamethrowers and hurling unfounded vitriol at those who voted against their candidate–”I told you so!” But no one told anyone anything. The first bailout was proposed under Bush, indicating that little would have been different if McCain were elected. A vote for Obama was a vote for McCain and vice-versa.
But people do not see it this way. In their worlds, winning is all that matters. Being part of a massive movement that visually represents change and winning is much more important than civic virtue or rational thinking. So, in scrambling to defend their “choice,” some have resorted to ad hominems, labeling those of us that did want to cast a vote as “the lazy or apathetic who chose not to be able to complain by not voting.”
What a load of horse shit.
By not voting, I chose not to participate in a system rigged against me, you, and the rest of America. By rigged, I don’t mean that people are stuffing ballot boxes or counting wrong; rigged, in this case, means that two parties and two parties alone are allowed participate. All of their money, their chosen elite, their hypocritical ideology is the only thing viewers are able to see when viewing, rather than participating in politics. What has happened is the two parties have morphed together, pooling their resources to keep out third parties from debates and even–in some cases–off of ballots entirely. Their ideologies have grown together, too, each appealing in some way or another to vast sectors of America. As a result, the system is rigged in their favor, giving Americans the choice between Republicrats or Republicrats. Thus, voting itself is submitting to a system rigged against zealous voters, giving them no right to complain.
At the same time, voting for a Democrat or a Republic is always voting for the lesser of two evils. Why must we make a choice like this when both parties have devolved to such evil as to be hated with uniform rhetoric from each side? Voting (D) or (R) is no different from not voting. Your vote will not change the way in which politicians bend you over, steal your money, and wrap you in foam to save you from yourself.
So why not vote Independent, you ask? For the same reason many choose not to vote Red in Blue states and vice-versa. The likelihood that an Independent candidate will receive enough votes to take even a single state is smaller than the likelihood that one person’s vote will decide the right county that decides the right state that decides the presidential election. Your chances of dying on the way to cast your vote–rather by car accident, heart attack, meteor, struck by lightning–are much higher than you having any impact whatsoever on an election’s outcome. Voting Independent will not solve the problem.
Not voting, yet participating in politics is the only way for Americans to change anything. Start locally, then regionally, then nationally. Affect change in your nation with something that is protected above your right to vote: your voice. When Southern blacks were not allowed to vote in the early 20th century, they still made their voices heard to such an extent that, in the 1950s and 1960s, they were able to forever change the South by securing the rights they deserved. They didn’t need to vote to permanently alter the landscape of American politics and neither do you.
Go out, debate, buy or write a book on government and politics, get involved in political discourse, challenge your politicians to think for themselves, and, if all else fails, work to destroy the corrupted foundations on which they stand. Leaving politicians naked, removed from their marble towers in the District of Columbia, is the only real way to change the system. Short of advocating violence, I can only say that the best way to get the attention of politicians and a nation is destroy something they take for granted. In the American South, it took the exposing of the deep rooted white supremacy and the destruction of a phony sense of peaceful race relations until change occurred. For the nation, it will take millions of Americans to see how fucked up our political system is and those Americans to do something about it.
Whatever you decide to do, do not validate the system that has allowed generations of politicians to give themselves limitless wealth and power at your expense by voting.
So fuck you P. Diddy, Rock The Vote, Citizen Change, and Vote or Die. You are part of the problem in more ways than you’ll ever know.
Want to Know More?
There are plenty of articles out there on this subject and I encourage you to make up your own mind, even (and especially) if you disagree with me.