To Vote or Not To Vote: One Person’s Viewpoint

By Deb Equality Della Piana on April 14, 2018 • ( 0 )

“I understand the fear over Donald Trump. I too want to crush the growing fascist sentiments rising up from the rot and decay of American society. But voting for Clinton and supporting the Democratic Party will not halt our descent into despotism. It will only accelerate it. Trump is not creating phenomena. He is responding to them. It is up to us to halt the array of forces, including the Trump campaign, that are preparing a species of American fascism and orchestrating a global ecocide. The only way we have left to vote is with our feet.” -Chris Hedges

Again, I invoke Chris Hedges. When it comes to assessing our present condition, there is nobody better in my mind. When it comes to what we must do right now, what Chris Hedges is saying is what inspired me to start #BecomeUngovernable. Remember all that outrage we felt just a couple of years ago? We were angry that the primaries were stolen from us. Bernie Sanders wasn’t the victim; we were the victims of that crime. All of that outrage has pretty much evaporated. The Democrats have done a hell of a job creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt as they deflect attention from the party’s rampant corruption.

The net result is a clamoring for the Democratic Party’s return to power. Democratic Party loyalists are deluding themselves by calling the likes of Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and — dare I mention his name — Bernie Sanders “progressives.” Sure. Up against any of the GOP dogs, they look like “progressives.” But they don’t pass the smell test. In order to really be progressive, you have to take a stand against American imperialism. All I hear as we get ready to bomb Syria, kill innocent people, and make their land uninhabitable is crickets. It doesn’t matter that there’s no proof that an attack has even happened. Not. One. Pushback.

Hell, the primary fiasco is at least a year removed now. It doesn’t matter that the American people got screwed by the Clintonistas. These same voters have vilified the Becks for having the courage to pursue the DNC Fraud Lawsuit as if they are the problem. They aren’t. The Democrats are. It doesn’t matter that the Democrats have single-handedly brought back the cold war and placed us in a very real position of facing nuclear armageddon. It doesn’t matter that Donna Brazile gave the Clinton cabal the debate questions while she was a member of the CNN staff. In spite of the fact that we the people all have to go through background checks just to get a minimum-wage job, the 44 Democrats who employed the Awans (Pakistani nationals) as IT specialists waived their background checks. Nobody in the mainstream media talks about that because the Democrats own the mainstream media now. The media outlets are no longer the insurers of truth in government; they are now in collusion with the Washington powers.

Of course, there’s still that “hope” (there’s that word again, what I call the “revolution killer”) that Donald Trump will be impeached. It sincerely doesn’t matter that it’s Mike Pence waiting in the wings to add the fear of God to our fascist system. After Stormy Daniels took the opportunity to get her fifteen minutes of fame and her 60 Minutes appearance, Americans were surer than ever that she’d be the catalyst for impeachment. A sordid affair twelve years prior to winning an election isn’t going to do it, folks. No matter. The backup solution is returning the Democrats to power. Continuing to vote “the lesser of two evils” is much easier than doing anything differently. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t accomplished anything over the decades we’ve done this except turn the country over to the corporations and the military-industrial complex.

All I see are bumper stickers encouraging “Take back the House,” “Flip the Senate,” blah, blah, blah. And to what end? To what end? The Democrats are busy cultivating candidates from the CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon to run in competitive 2018 midterm elections. Where’s the improvement? Do we really want to infuse our legislature with more veterans of the deep state? Isn’t it bad enough that we already have three generals in Trump’s cabinet, Mike Pompeo looming as the new Secretary of State, John “Crazy Ass” Bolton as National Security Adviser and a known supporter of torture about to be installed as the new CIA chief? You see no problems with John Brennan and other deep state operatives being given jobs in the mainstream media? That isn’t bad enough? We need Deep State Democrats in our legislature as well?

Not voting isn’t an option?

I’m afraid it’s a very real option, as much as many do not want to hear it. There is no voting our way out of this. Even if our election process were cleaned up, there is no voting our way out of this mess. However, the fact is that not even our voting process has been cleaned up. Please allow me to tell you, from my perspective, why voting in America is not only a waste but is a barrier to the process of real, substantive change.

These are in no particular order of importance, except for the first reason. Beyond that, they are all important.

By voting within this system, you are continuing to feed the monster. You are legitimizing a system you know is corrupted by Wall Street, corporate, and special interest money. Period. Unless the blood money is removed from the process, all the points following are rather useless to address.
You are returning to power the very party that legitimized Donald Trump as the GOP nominee. The stories are now legendary. The Clintons played Trump, the DNC played the media, and the media played us, fully believing that there was no possible way Hillary Clinton could lose to Trump.
You will also be supporting a party that committed election fraud and continues to be accused of it in other races. Bernie Sanders didn’t get screwed. The people got screwed because it proved how little our votes and voices mean.
The strategies employed by the Democratic party are indicative of a party that is concerned with itself, not the American people.
You are continuing to vote using machines where vote flipping and hacking is a breeze. Yet, moving to paper ballots and hand counting under supervision is a moot point unless the money is removed from the equation.
In order to improve our lot in Congress, you actually must have better candidates than the ones presently occupying the hallowed halls of our legislature. I postulate that we have no such candidates. We are merely trading one piece of garbage for another.
Again, there is no way to outvote the elites. Our votes are meaningless and powerless unless the money is out.

The process of voting is like playing Whack-a-Mole every four years. There is no purpose to it. There is no change that will ever come of it. There will be no progressive candidate replacing Donald Trump. There will be a dyed-in-the-corporate-state Democrat in place, and nothing will change. The wars will not end. Income inequality will not be addressed. The Democratic candidate will use guns, women’s rights, LGBT rights and perhaps, if it suits his or her political needs, climate change to hook you all back in. However, I assure you that there will be neither a roll-back of Trump’s policies nor advances in the ones the people deem important. You will not get single payer, because Dick Gephardt, a former Senator and Democratic Party operative, has promised it won’t happen in his lifetime. Last time I looked, he was still sucking up all the air in the damned room. It is a ruse. Whenever the Dems need a progressive boost, they break out the single payer bill and blow off the inch worth of dust. We didn’t get it under Obama, and we will certainly not get it under a President Booker, or Harris, or Patrick. There will not be a President Sanders, Gabbard or Turner. In fact, they will nary be a blip on the DNC’s screen.

Desperate times call for bold action

These are certainly desperate times. There’s certainly nothing bold about voting in the same manner that we have been for decades. That is why we are where we are. Under the best of circumstances, there is no way that voting is going to pave our way out of this for all of the reasons I have previously explained. Therefore, in my mind, refusing to vote at all is certainly a bold move and a very real option. I prefer to remain outside the system, building membership in alternative parties.

If voting is something you are compelled to do, then I urge you to vote for alternative candidates in alternative parties. You have the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Socialist Party, for starters. Nobody is required to vote for Democrats or Republicans. There are no laws requiring you to vote for the duopoly, and it is more than clear that they do not have the solutions to our problems. In fact, the corrupt duopoly is responsible for the fascist state we now reside in.

There’s another thing people should remember. Nobody should be shamed for voting the way they do, and nobody should be shamed for refusing to support a corrupt system. I urge you not to support this system but, at the end of the day, you are going to decide what works best for you. Voting is not a “pack” function. It is a personal choice. We may discuss candidates or positions with others but we make our final decision alone. We are not required to tell anyone how we vote.

Finally, regardless of who won in 2016, whether Sanders, Clinton or Trump, we would need a revolution to make certain, lasting change. Nothing has changed. Voting in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 big kahuna is a minute piece of what must be done to take our power back. Those elections are rendered even more meaningless by the terminal illness coursing throughout the capitalist system. At the end of the day, it isn’t about one candidate or one president. It’s about a sick system that no longer serves the people, and it is about the people rising up to take back their power.