vote for change? impossible

American elections, in a nutshell:

Americans out of work, out of income, out of homes and prospects, and out of hope for their children's careers are angry. But the political system offers them no way of bringing about change. They can change the elected servants of the oligarchs, but they cannot change the policies or the oligarchs.

Another key point:

The control of the oligarchs extends to the media. The Clinton administration permitted a small number of mega-corporations to concentrate the US media in a few hands. Corporate advertising executives, not journalists, control the new American media, and the value of the mega-companies depends on government broadcast licenses. The media's interest is now united with that of the government and the oligarchs.

On top of all the other factors that have made American elections meaningless, voters cannot even get correct information from the media about the problems that they and the country face.

Donkeys

Any poor souls still suffering under the delusion that government represents the interests of the people really ought to read this story. The whole thing is about how Nancy Pelosi is "twisting arms" to ensure that enough democrats vote in favor of Obama's stupid healthcare reform bill. Enough representatives must do the "heavy lifting" to ensure that the Democrats win the "argument between Democrats and their own constituents."

The contempt these people have for democracy is obvious.

For an example of the criteria she uses to decide who will be "given absolution to vote no," Pelosi won't "grant a pass" to Representatives whose "districts have smaller black populations," because black votes are "traditionally reliable," so their Representatives can afford to support the bill. Because once you know votes are reliable, YOU DON'T HAVE TO EARN THEM BY ACTING IN THE INTERESTS OF PEOPLE WHO CAST THOSE VOTES. This is what Democrats do. Stop voting for them, you fucking idiots!

underdog strategy

Reminiscent of Arthur Silber's tale, here's a basic strategy for resisting the evil of Washington. I hope I live to actually see a state secede from the US.

whatever dude

Shit, man. I can't even sit here and watch a pirated internet feed of a crappy NBA game without being subjected to idiots from the sports world pontificating about how we all should treasure and exercise our right to vote. Fucking sheep.

Chomsky on this election

Chomsky's case in favor of voting for Obama (in swing states, and "without illusions").

This is you

Why I won't vote: Lesser Evilism is a sham

So I wrote a sprawling reply to a comment, only to realize that by the end I had written my way into a pretty good point that should have been more emphasized. I ought to rewrite it, but, let's face it, I'm just a lazy writer with a thinly-read blog whose audience disappeared when he stopped writing about poker. So I'll add some more thoughts here at the top.

Anyway, the point is this: if you accept the lesser-evil logic of voting for Democrats, you're basically saying that you'll support anything as long as you're convinced that the alternative is worse. And once you admit that, you become completely exploitable and hope is lost.

Given a choice between two evils, the lesser evil is better. That part of it isn't wrong. But the flaw in the lesser-evil argument in favor of supporting Democrats is that there are more than two choices. There's always another option for a better outcome, it just might be very unlikely to win. If you make it known that you'll always support the lesser evil and never opt for the risky 3rd choice, those two evils can get worse and worse, knowing that you'll have to support one of them. So at some point you have to make a stand with the third option.

When should you stop favoring the more likely lesser evil and opt for the unlikely 3rd (or 4th, etc) option*? Well I think that is a judgement everyone has to make for themselves, but I think we can agree on 2 things. First is that the more evil the two evil options are, the more we should favor the highly unlikely 3rd option. And second is that the more similar the two evils (i.e. the lesser evil isn't really that much less evil), the more we should favor the third. Much of the discussion below is about the second point, though I discuss the first as well.


* - equally important question is "what is that third option?" Here, as usual, I argue for boycotting the election. I think there is also honor in voting for 3rd party candidates, like Nader or the Green Party. My preference for boycott over that option is a topic for another time.
----
Some recent comments by David are worth considering.

Even if you recognize that both Democrats and Republicans are basically two factions of the same party, working together towards an authoritarian corporate police state domestically, and endless violent interventions internationally, all for the enrichment of an elite few at the expense of the vast majority of the rest of us, there is still the question as to whether one faction is preferable to the other because of their minor differences. And due to the tremendous amount of power and control wielded by various holders of public office, those minor differences can add up to be very meaningful for lots of people.

I've argued repeatedly that the best response to our sham democracy is to boycott the elections. I generally think that refusing as much as possible to interact with a system that is hopelessly rigged against my interests is the most effective and honorable way to dissent. That's my approach. But everyone has to make their own decisions, and maybe my moral calculus is different than yours.

I do believe that it is possible to construct good arguments in favor of participating in these elections. I think that if they exist, they'd look something like what David said: that these small differences add up enough to justify supporting one side over the other. But here's the thing. I think there's a huge burden of proof to be met, and I'm not at all convinced that David or people who make similar arguments have met them. For his reasoning to stand up, I'd need to be strongly convinced that these differences actually exist, considering not just the immediate short-term impact of the minor policy changes, but also the long run consequences of various decisions. By going out and voting for BO, you're casting a vote in support of a candidate who has repeatedly lied about matters of extreme importance, who fully supports the framework of the US using lethal military force around the globe in the so-called "War on Terror," who fully supports domestic lawlessness for the executive branch, who fully supports using taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street lunatics, and so on and so on. In order to actively support such monstrous evil, you need to be very very sure that what you're doing really does somehow lead to a better result than your other choices.

David lists 3 commonly-cited reasons to think Democrats are preferable. (1)They make better judicial appointments. (2)They are less influenced by irrational factions (specifically Christians), and (3) there is better treatment of persecuted groups of people under Democratic leadership. First I'll make a few scattered rebuttals to these notions, then I'll argue that even if he's right, that isn't a convincing case in favor of supporting Democrats.

In regards to the first point, it seems to me that the pattern of judicial appointments is roughly like this. Under Republican leadership, the most radically far-right judges that can possibly be taken seriously are pushed through the system with little obstruction from Democrats. Under Democratic leadership, highly conservative judges are appointed, but called "moderate" by Democrats to make them sound reasonable and responsible, and yet fiercely opposed by Republicans who push for even more conservative jurists. There is no force for a genuinely liberal judiciary, just a two-pronged approach towards an ever more conservative one , that moves a little more slowly to the right under Democrats. I should note that this is 'measured' relative to public sentiment, meaning perhaps overall the courts could become more liberal on an absolute scale, but the force of the political process is to move them as far right as the public at large can stomach.

Do women and gays and minorities receive better treatment under Democrats? Well, not the ones in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Somalia. They'll keep getting slaughtered at roughly the same rate under BO or McCain. And it seems to me that plenty of Democrat leaders would be quite willing to give up on abortion, or to turn the other way on gay-bashing. They'll maintain the policies that keep black people at a disadvantage, and keep locking up black men who turn to the underground pharmeceutical economy as an inevitable response to that disadvantage. Cause, I mean, what are the black people going to do, vote for Republicans?
Last is that under Democrats, the insane Christian Right won't have the President's ear as much. But Democrats have plenty of other insane people pulling their strings. Like who? Well how about the lunatics who got us into this economic meltdown in the first place? The insanity and influence of the Christian Right is benign compared to the murderous pyschopathy of corporate influence. And it isn't like the rabid Christian Right is powerless under Democrat rule. In fact they might work themself into such an outrage about being ruled by a terrorist Muslim nigger with a funny name that they become even more of a political force.

Real political change doesn't happen from the top down, but from the bottom up. The President doesn't dictate how gays are treated, the people do, and the President responds. BO might treat them better than McCain, but how do we know that the further outrages under McCain wouldn't be some kind of tipping point to drive people towards some kind of social revolution (the reverse of the Muslim-nigger effect on the racist Christians)? Just because the government might be more officially hostile under Republican executives or judges doesn't necessarily mean the public will be.

So those are my scattered rebutals, and you might point out that all of these objections can still be consistent with Democrats being a relatively lesser evil. The conservative Democrat judges are better than the ultra-right Republican ones, right? The Republicans and Democrats are both run by corporations, but at least the Christians are more ignored under Democrats, right? And the Democrats might be a bit less willing to stomp the queers, right?

Say that is the case. Does that actually justify supporting a blood-drenched criminal for President? Does more support for gay marriage merit participating in a system that guarantees perpetual war and suffering on a monumental scale? Does the slightly lower chance of Roe v Wade being overturned make it worth it to lend the appearance of legitimate democracy to a ruling class who privatize profits to an elite few while making risk and losses public? Does having fewer Liberty University graduates in the Justice Department make it ok to vote for a party that passed retroactive immunity for companies that spied on us, a party that passed laws to make torture legal, that has refused to impeach Bush?

David says we should support a murderous criminal party because their crimes aren't quite as bad as the crimes of their partner. But the obvious fact of their partnership means that by supporting one, you're supporting the other. Not a lot can happen in the USG if one of the parties doesn't want it to happen. Everything that we've seen happen under Bush is fully the responsibility of Democrats as well. There's not the slightest reason to think that BO will set any of those things right, and there's ample reason to think that he'll continue on largely the same path.

But David and many others want to support this whirlwind of bipartisan destruction, in the name of a few very marginal differences that may or may not even really exist. What are the long term consequences of this? It tells the ruling class that you'll accept anything, as long as you're convinced that the only alternative is something slightly worse. Stop and think about that. Say it over and over. Think about how easy this can be exploited. And think about whether a ruling class who has slaughtered a million Iraqis and stolen trillions of your dollars would be willing and able to exploit you in such a way.

Chomsky makes the important point that genuine freedom and democracy means that the use of power should be assumed to be illegitimate unless proven otherwise, and that the burden of proof should be very high. Participation in a national election to decide the holders of offices is certainly a use of power. And I don't see that David's argument has met the burden of proof for the exercise of such power, especially considering the strategic consequences of demonstrating your willingness to support evil out of a fear of slightly greater evil. It isn't clear to me that there is going to be much, if any, difference in real-world results under either option, and it is clear to me that both options are evil. So I'm not voting. Are you?

Democrat Warlust (update)

They're giddy that it might soon be their turn to order the bloodshed. They'll be doing it more efficiently than those Bush guys!

Seriously, this is what I'm supposed to support? I'm supposed to line up and cast a vote for these lunatics? This is the "lesser evil" offered to me by the system? Doesn't this kinda make you think that maybe a system where this is the best available option is hopelessly broken?

I just want to fucking scream and then puke and then weep for humanity. I don't know, maybe this is what we deserve.

Fuck you, Biden.
Fuck you, BO.
Fuck the Democrats.
Fuck this election.
Fuck the system.

Update: Typically great stuff from Chris Floyd.

Democrats are great

In this round of The Most Important Election Ever, it is very important not to Waste Your Vote, and thus it is every right-minded citizens duty to march to the polls and vote for the party that thinks this is a perfectly good idea.

I know, I know, the other guys are going to cage their protesters in 15X15 razor-wired pens and sprinkle them with flesh-eating acid, so the 20X20 razor-wired pens are clearly deserving of our support. I wonder how much I have to donate to the BO campaign to get my name as a sponsor on one of those cages?

Why I won't vote: "Tennis on the Titanic"

During the Gore/Bush/Nader presidential election, while the entire nation was hypnotized by the spectacle, I had a vision. I saw the Titanic churning through the waters of the North Atlantic toward an iceberg looming in the distance, while the passengers and crew concentrated on a tennis game taking place on deck.

In our election-obsessed culture, everything else going on in the world - war, hunger, official brutality, sickness, the violence of everyday life for huge numbers of people - is swept out of the way while the media covers every volley of the candidates. Thus, the superficial crowds out the meaningful, and this is very useful for those who do not want citizens to look beyond the surface of the system. Hidden by the contest of the candidates are the real issues of race, class, war, and peace, which the public is not supposed to think about.

That's the opening of a Howard Zinn essay included in his book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. Here's the closing.

The ferocity of the contest for the presidency in recent elections conceals the agreement between both parties on fundamentals. The evidence for this statement lies in eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration, whose major legislative accomplishments - destroying welfare, imposing more punitive sentences on criminals, increasing Pentagon spending - were part of the Republican agenda.

The Demacrats and the Republicans do not dispute the continued corporate control of the economy. Neither party endorses free national healthcare, proposes extensive low-cost housing, demands a minimum income for all Americans, or supports a truly progressive income tax to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor. Both support the death penalty and growth of prisons. Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba.

Perhaps when, after the next election, the furor dies down over who really won the tennis match and we get over our anger at the referee's calls and the final, disputed score, we will finally break the hypnotic spell of the game and look around. We may then think about whether the ship is slowly going down and whether there are enough lifeboats and what we should do about all that.

This analogy is pretty fucking good. So fuck Gore and Bush and fuck the 2000 election. Fuck BO and McCain and this stupid election too. All the candidates are the same. Stop wasting your efforts on this bullshit.

Why I won't vote: same shit, different wrapper

Everyone who justifies their support for Democrats with the logic that they might not be great but they're better than Republicans really ought to read this kind of thing. Democrats do all the exact same things as Republicans, they just do them more discretely. Bush isn't unique for the kinds of things he's done; he's unique because he's so open about it. Obama will do all the same basic things, only he has half the country under his jedi mind shit so they'll support him to the bitter end. Good little liberals express bitter amazement that middle class people would ever be so stupid as to vote decidedly against their own interests for the Republicans, while they vote decidedly against their own interest for Democrats. Kiss the boot that stomps on your face forever. It is the American way.

Who is the lesser evil?

That is getting harder to assess. Below are the two schools of thought that say maybe Obama is worse than McCain.

Stop Me Before I Vote Again:

So claimed the magnificent Diderot: "Two or three consecutive reigns of a just and enlightened despotism... is one of the great misfortunes of any free nation."

Sound to you like the possible pending Obama anni mirabiles? Recall that the three consecutive terms of the New Deal saved corporate America to march triumphantly under the victory arch of world war two right smack dab into the heyday of the American century.

Is this why, on some tacit, crumbling-infrastructure mind level, we rads fear Obie's success far more than his failure? Is this why we root for dismalitude? Why are we so fond of spoiling the ballots of Lady Liberty -- while she remains on the limited liability plan?

Arthur Silber:

I am not quite there yet, but I am seriously considering the following. Depending on how this campaign develops, and depending on how Obama conducts himself and -- very significantly to me -- how Obama's most devoted supporters act, I may conclude that, if you vote, you should vote for John McCain. Unbelievable, I realize, but I may have no choice but to think that the alternative is far too dangerous to countenance.

Why I won't vote: Al Gore Iraq myth debunked

An idea that I've encountered (most recently in an email conversation with Trakker, but other times as well) in response to my stance against voting is that if only Al Gore had won in 2000, we never would have invaded Iraq. And somehow this proves that voting, and voting for Democrats specifically, is a very important obligation. I don't get the logic, but I don't think logic is really the point with this argument. Nevertheless I'll respond to it.

First of all, Al Gore did win the election in 2000 and the votes didn't matter because the Supreme Court said the son of the guy who gave them their job was the winner. And, as I've mentioned before, Al Gore in his role as Senate President blocked the attempts of a few Democrats from the House of Representatives to contest the election. So the votes didn't matter, and even the guy who won the election agreed that the votes didn't matter.

But more to the heart of it, was there any reason in fall of 2000 to think Gore would advance a less destructive foreign policy than Bush? Specifically in regards to Iraq, Gore had just been part of 8 years of the Clinton regime that imposed brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people. When it was pointed out to Secretary of State Madeline Albright that these sanctions caused the death of over half a million Iraqi children, her response was "we think the price is worth it." I think it is reasonable to assume that "we" includes Gore, and as far as I know Gore never spoke against those sanctions as a candidate.

So Al Gore was part of an administration willing to kill over 500,000 children on the theory that starving the Iraqi population would cause them to overthrow Saddam and enhance US access to Middle East oil. But at the time of the 2000 election, even if everyone could have magically known that a group of fanatical religious fundamentalists with no connection to Iraq would fly planes into U.S. buildings, we were supposed to be quite certain that Gore would be less inclined than Bush to respond by killing more Iraqis in an effort to overthrown Saddam. Decisions must be judged by the expected outcomes at the time of the decision, and I don't see any way that it would have been possible to forecast the Iraq outcome.

And so now here were are, worrying about the 2008 election and how McCain will be more of a disaster than Obama for some reason or another. And who is the headliner of Obama's national security advisory group? Madeline "worth it" Albright. As far as I can tell, the decision available to voters is between Republicans, who drop bombs on brown folks, and Democrats, who prefer to starve them to death.

Why I won't vote: mob lawyers and mob thugs

Here's an analogy I'm working on. Let's consider it a part of my "why I won't vote" series.

Democrats are dirty mob lawyers; Republicans are the mob enforcers. In the power struggle to be the next don, people get to choose between the no-neck tough guy (McCain) or the smooth-talking debonair schmoozer (Obama).

Think about what the mafia is. They operate in a geographical area, using a combination of violence, fear, and pay-offs to get whatever they want for the people who control the organization. It is a corrupt power structure run by amoral men to advance their own interests at the expense of everyone else. That is what government is too. Same thing.

People who live in a community where organized crime operates have to pay their taxes, and then they mostly can stay out of trouble. They're told these taxes are for their own protection. And that's true, though mostly for illegitimate reasons. There might be occasional threats - thieves, rapists, whatever - and the mafia will come down hard on those people. But that's only because those people are taking the mafia's action. The primary threat to the community is the mafia itself, its hired thieves and rapists.

So then when you in the community are generously offered a say in who takes over as the next don, you're too excited for a chance to participate to notice that you're never offered a choice to disband the mafia entirely. No, you're just offered two choices - a tough guy or a lawyer. Some of you look at the clenched jaw and the dead eyes of the brute and then at the nice smile and eloquent prose of the white-collar charmer and decide that it really isn't a contest. Yeah we'd rather have better choices, but surely the lawyer is better. He's very nice and you can invite him to a dinner party without scaring the guests. So maybe we should just support the lawyer. He's the lesser evil.

Until you realize that the mob is always run by either a lawyer or a tough-guy, and that they always advance the same basic agenda. They're always going to steal from you, threaten violence, and use violence. The lawyer's purpose is to conceal as much of it as he can, and make complex arguments about why the rest of it is really not that bad. They work within the accepted system, exploiting it for their own cynical advantage. The thug's part is to scare the shit out of people so they don't fight back. In periods of time where the lawyers are on the top, everyone is a little more comfortable, and they don't fight back as much as the mafia slowly dips its fingers into more and more things. After all, it is that nice shiny lawyer running things, and violence isn't really his style. But you're forgetting that when the next don is a thug, he'll take that increased access and ramp up the violence, use all that extra influence to take even more for himself, and everything is worse than ever. That's how the cycle has worked for centuries, and that is always how it will work. But short term choices will always make it seem like one or the other is better. But you're forgetting that the thugs can't do their thing without the lawyers. The lawyers make the thugs possible. The lawyers are thugs too. They're the same.

And so what not enough people realize is that they don't have to put up with the mafia at all. There are way more of us than there are of them, even if they have more guns. But that's why the mafia relies on fear. You're afraid that if you stand up to them, not enough people will get your back, and you'll go down alone. The mafia counts on this, and that's why they make examples out of a few trouble-makers every once in a while. That scares people, and they retreat and pay their tax and don't say anything too serious.

Debate

I've been having an interesting and intense conversation with my friend Trakker that has spilled over between several posts on his blog and mine. Check out these posts and comment sections:

http://trakker.typepad.com/neon_gods/2008/05/a-stupid-tone-deaf-remark-a-thoughtless-apology.html

http://trakker.typepad.com/neon_gods/2008/05/cleaning-up-after-the-bush-occupation.html

http://trakker.typepad.com/neon_gods/2008/06/lefty-obama-supporters-are-viciously-dangerously-nauseatingly-self-deluded.html

http://seeforyourself.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-i-wont-vote-every-conversation-with.html

I argue that Democrats in general and Obama in particular don't deserve support. I say not voting is better than voting for them, and that national elections are a huge distraction from meaningful political issues, designed to create the false appearance of democracy.

Trakker says that the system might be broken, but our only option is to fix it or replace it. He says that Obama represents the best chance we have of fixing it, and so is worthy of support. And since President Obama is the only realistic alternative to President McCain, we especially should support Obama.

While I admire Trakker's passion and his ultimate goals, I think he's chosen a bad strategy in pursuit of those goals. I think his arguments are weak, mostly misleading emotion, and don't really address the points I've made. But, I would think that, since I'm arguing against him, so feel free to tell me otherwise. Good debate is healthy. Go check it out!

Why I won't vote: every conversation with an Obama supporter

Why shouldn't I support Obama? He's way better than McCain or Hillary!

Well I think it is more complicated than just comparing the few viable candidates. The first thing you need to do is let go of your idea that the United States of America is a democracy. It isn't. Look, Dr. Chomsky says so:



He's really fucking smart, so you ought to really give this notion some consideration. America isn't a democracy.


Yeah, but, like, we have elections. We get to vote, right? That makes it a democracy!

Not really. All elections mean is that the public has a choice between various candidates. It doesn't mean that those candidates represent the interests of the people, or that the people have any say in the decisions that are important to them. All elections mean is that people can choose between candidates. The real power is in who chooses the candidates.


Uh, so... who chooses the candidates?

Well, first look at a what all the candidates have in common. You might notice that they're all politicians. They all have lots of money behind them. They're all Democrats or Republicans.


Yeah but wait, if they're all the same, how come there are Democrats and Republicans?

They aren't all exactly the same. There are some minor differences between them, perhaps even some major ones. But even major differences are dwarfed by their profound similarities. And the reason they have so many similarities is because the big money that backs them generally comes from people with very similar interests.

So now to answer the question, there are Democrats and Republicans for a few reasons, but two main reasons stand out. First, while the people who make the decisions have vast areas of common interests, they do have some differences. And so factions form that compete with each other over those minor areas of disagreement.

But far more importantly to you and me, there are Democrats and Republicans because it creates the illusion of choice for the public. The interests of the people in power, the people who control both the Democrat and the Republican parties, are very different than the interests of the public. So it is important that they make it seem as if the public has meaningful choices. Parties are kind of like marketing gimmicks. They create appealing slogans that generates enthusiasm, and use various methods of deception to get the public to overlook the fact that their actions and their rhetoric don't match. The vast majority of their actions favor the interests of those elite few, at the expense of the general public and the rest of the world.


Ok, well that all makes sense, and I kind of agree. But still, Obama is way better than McCain.

He certainly wants you to think that. It is possible that it is true, though I think it is much harder to predict than most people seem to think. Like Chomsky says, the campaigns are designed to highlight character qualities, rather than positions on meaningful issues. It seems to me that Obama has been highly evasive on issues, and quite willing to outright lie.

Regardless, putting your efforts, your time, your money, your hope, into Obama is putting your efforts, your time, your money, your hope into the Democratic party. And that Democratic party is a crucial part of that whole corrupt and disorienting system that gives the illusion of choice without actually providing one. Its primary function is to attract the votes of progressive/liberal-minded people. It does this by saying things that progressives like to hear, and very rarely by passing measures that progressives like (so long as they don't conflict with the interests of the elites), but then primarily using their electoral success to serve the interests of the elites and maintain their own personal and party power.


Yeah, I kind of felt that way after the last election...


Exactly! In 2006 you supported Democrats because you wanted them to end the Iraq war. The war escalated. You wanted Democrats to stop the US from torturing people and holding them without charges. They not only stopped it, they legalized it. You wanted them to impeach Bush and Cheney for their obvious crimes, but they said impeachment was off the table.


So just because Democrats have always claimed to offer a better alternative to Republicans, just because they've said they stand for the things that are important to me, and just because they've never actually done a single thing to back up those claims, and just because there's an extremely painful recent example for me to dwell on... wait but Obama is changing everything. He's different!

Argh! Nobody gets to the position he's in without being completely a creature of the system. Big business is pouring money into his campaign; he's selling out his friends because they say true things that are politically inconvenient; he wants to increase the size of the military; he refuses to acknowledge the turmoil wrought by Israeli action in the Middle East; the list goes on forever. He's not different.


But he's better than McCain!!

Again, he very much wants you to think that, but I'm not sure I see how. You could certainly look at one very narrow issue and conclude that Obama would handle things better in than McCain in that domain. A popular example of that is military belligerence. It might well be the case that Obama is less likely to bomb Iran, for example, although Obama seems quite unwilling to advocate non-aggression. Even if Obama is less likely to launch another war of aggression, he could be more likely to inflict massive harm on people through economic sanctions, as Bill Clinton did in Iraq. Or he might be more inclined to use his beefed up military for "humanitarian" interventions, which never seem to have humanitarian outcomes. Or Obama might have the acquiescence of a Democratic Congress that allows him to pass various measures that cause long-term harm, whereas a McCain presiding with a Democratic Congress wouldn't allow much of anything to pass, preventing harmful measures from proceeding. Or....

The point of that isn't to argue that Obama will be worse or as bad as McCain, but to illustrate the difficulty in figuring it out. Which is once again why I say supporting Democrats is a huge fucking waste of any good intentions you have, because you're supporting the system that allows a decision that is seemingly so important to be contested by people who offer you no meaningful commentary on the important issues.


So you're just saying I shouldn't support anyone? I shouldn't vote? Well then what should I do? You aren't offering any alternatives.

Why does pointing out the massive flaws of the system have to be accompanied by a specific plan of alternative action? Whatever causes you support, whatever ideals you hold that you think Obama might be slightly more likely to represent than the other idiot, you'd be better served pursuing them in other ways. Presidential elections don't change that shit. They're a huge brick wall between you and your vision, and you're just slamming your head into that wall by supporting candidates. If I come along and point out that slamming your head against the wall isn't going to knock it down, isn't that pretty fucking useful information right there? But I guess some people have hit their head so many times that they can't even recognize the futility.


I'm still going to vote for Obama.

I know you are. That's the fucking diabolical beauty of the system.

Why I Won't Vote: Endless Slaughter Everywhere

McCain, Clinton, Obama, they all support this. And I'm supposed to concern myself about the lesser evil? Read all the gory details: the gang rapes of young women, the mutilation of children, the crushed testicles of men, and then realize that this is a course of action that all three of those monsters agree on. How hopelessly wrong is it that we obsess over the tiny differences between them while this is what is going on in the world? Fuck the media, fuck the candidates, fuck all of their wars, and fuck their worthless ballots.

catch up blogging: NPR, Jeremiah Wright, Iran, voting

• I listened to about half an hour of NPR while I was home and was disgusted. 20 minutes of it was spent analyzing exactly how black Obama is, and how that mattered for his electability. The "issues" were mentioned once, as something that Obama would like to run on, but there was concern that "the media" wouldn't let him. Gee, NPR, I wonder how that would happen?
• The other 10 minutes were spent on how crazy and polarizing Jeremiah Wright is and what damage he is doing to the Obama campaign. No examination of what he says, of course. (Not that I care if Obama gets elected. His denunciations of Wright, with various lies packaged in, are pathetic and reveal him for what he really is, not that it wasn't already obvious.) I had a recent conversation about Wright with one of my more open-minded family members, who lamented how "divisive" he is, and yet seemed quite unaware of what the man has actually said. Gee, NPR, I wonder how that would happen?
• For typically excellent writing about Wright/Obama check out Floyd and Silber.
• I might comment more on this in a "why I won't vote" post, but check out the conversation here and at the post it links to. Is this the best the opposition has to offer?
• War with Iran seems inevitable, as I've said for a while now. I really feel like I want to be out of here before it happens. I don't exactly know why. My moving date is in 11 days, so... hooray I'll be in complete comfort in a slightly different wealthy nation before thousands of people are senselessly slaughtered! That's the boundless narcissism this blog was built upon.
  

Why I won't vote: Religion

Nobody gets elected without proclaiming a belief in an imaginary sky daddy. This means they either have a fundamental inability to understand the world around them, or they're willing to lie to the nation they aspire to purportedly serve. These aren't qualities of someone I'd want leading an organization that controls the entire world by force. Every candidate sucks.

Of course I don't think anyone should be leading an organization that controls the entire world, so the real role religion plays in this "why I won't vote" story is illustrating what a farce elections and governments are. We claim to value separation of church and state, claim to value a system of government where there is no religious test for public office, yet make a mockery of that notion every election season.

I won't analyze here what role the population and the media gatekeepers each play in this hypocrisy. But the whole process is an elaborate ritual, with everyone playing their part, that accords religion far more respect than it deserves, thereby giving superstition far too great an influence in decisions that have profound impact on all of us. I won't play my part. I won't vote.

Why I won't vote: Sham Democracy

Perhaps the most important factor in my decision not to vote is that democracy is a sham in the United States. Business interests, not popular opinion, control the machinery of government, regardless of which button we push every four years (I'll leave a discussion of how votes literally don't even count for another entry). Elections are an elaborate charade providing the illusion of choice, but issues of public concern are carefully avoided. The policies enacted by our federal government are widely opposed by the public, and yet incumbents rarely lose congressional elections. As a result of the way campaigns are conducted, with the mind-melting techniques of the public relations industry, public awareness of the positions of candidates on issues is abysmally low, while voters increasingly cite "character" or "values" as the reason for their selections. (Here's what I think about the character and values of politicians.)

To quote Noam Chomsky's discussion of public opinion and public policy in his 2006 book Failed States:

A large majority of the public believe that the United States should accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the World Court, sign the Kyoto protocols, allow the United Nations to take the lead in international crisis, and rely on diplomatic and economic measures more than military ones in the "war on terror." Similar majorities believe the United States should resort to force only if there is "strong evidence that the country is in imminent danger of being attacked," thus rejecting the bipartisan consensus on "preemptive war" and adopting the rather conventional interpretation of the UN Charter reiterated by the UN's High-level Panel of December 2004 and the UN World Summit a year later. A small majority of the population even favors giving up Security Council vetoes, so that the United States would follow the UN's lead even if it is not the preference of the US state managers. On domestic issues, overwhelming majorities favor expansion of government programs: primarily health care (80 percent), but also funding for education and Social Security. Similar results on domestic issues have long been found in these studies conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR). As noted, other mainstream polls report that large majorities support guaranteed health care, even if it would raise taxes. Not only does the US government stand apart from the rest of the world on many crucial issues, but even from its own population.

I refuse to support this system and add to the illusion of its legitimacy. I won't vote.