Here's one way to lose an election. If you can't hold on to your base ...
Vote, or Revolt?
Beth Henry
Last December, I took my daughter and a friend of hers to a Distillers concert up in Houston. For those of you who have no contact with teen-agers, punk music, culture, and politics are becoming the “new” counter culture (and I have, I swear, actually heard those words used by people twenty years younger than I am). The reason for the quotation marks is that not only are the Distillers, Thrice, and NOFX popular, but so are the Clash, the Ramones, and other punk bands from the past two decades.
At punk concerts, you stand. For hours. This facilitates crowd surfing, which is enough to turn a fifty-year-old mother’s hair white, but reminds me of the “trust” exercises we used to do in acting class, in which we had to fall backwards and trust our classmates to catch us. After a couple of hours of keeping my daughter’s head in view, I was forced to take a restroom break. When I went in, I saw all manner of political and philosophical graffiti on the walls of the stall. I love bars with graffiti-friendly restroom walls, and have contributed my “eloquence” to many. Not having a pen, I took out my lipstick and added this sentiment:
“If you’re revolted, REVOLT!”
I am revolted. Disgusted, horrified, and outraged. I look back at the history of empire and oppression, and at the hideous cruelty it has wreaked upon human beings. I wonder what I could, or would, have done, had I been alive when those obscene abuses were perpetrated. I have always thought, “I would have stood up. I would have fought. I would not have compromised. I would have fought even in the face of certain defeat and irrevocable loss.”
That’s what I’ve always expected of myself.
What we have before us now is an opportunity to stand up, to make that choice to resist. To do all that we can to defeat the entrenched, elite imperialists who have turned the dreams of true democracy and equality, which have been the mainstay of our very souls, into a “horse race” in which we have no choice other than the ones offered by the oligarchs who got us into this bloody mess.
I find that I cannot use my vote to lend the legitimacy of democracy to anyone who does not completely reject our government’s rapacious and imperial policies
I cannot vote for anyone who believes that our country has a right to kill in order to support its swinish excesses of energy consumption.
I cannot vote for anyone who believes that Israel has a divine right to land and lives and resources that ensures them immunity from any international standards of law or human decency.
I cannot vote for anyone anointed by the corporate-owned media, because I know that, by the very fact of that ordination, he will support capitalist exploitation domestically, and imperial abuses abroad. His policies might, in the short term, pacify people in this country, but they will inevitably continue to pursue, albeit in a more tactful and politic manner, the aims of empire.
The results will ultimately be the same as if George W. Bush was reappointed, but the means by which those results are achieved would be more palatable domestically. There would also be a little more finesse and charm than W has displayed toward other heads of state, most of whom are fellow imperialists. Genocide and free-market abuses of human rights would simply go on under the radar, as they did during the Clinton administration.
I find I have no choice but to revolt, and to inspire others to do so, as well. I listened, on C-Span, to a Republican in the U.S. Senate going on about the failed socialist democracies of Europe. Well, why the hell have they run into trouble? It seems to me that those economies could not compete with economies like our own, which are based on free-market principles of Social Darwinism, elevated and promoted as inextricable from those of democracy and even morality.
For years, I have heard that “the government should be run like a business.” Now we see what happens when the government is run like a business. Our schools beg for crumbs. Our children go without food, health care, and, sometimes, even housing. Because the “defense” industry is the most powerful hammer for enriching the ruling class, every issue before this country becomes a nail. We therefore live in a world in which we are globally hated, and live in fear of reprisal both abroad and in our own country.
A government run like a business, devoted to profit above all other considerations, is what we have now. And it is not run by those who produce anything, but by those who live off the labor of others. It is run by those who believe that their profits are so sacred that they are entitled to kill and destroy populations all over the globe in order to sustain and increase them.
I do not see any media-endorsed candidate for the office of the president of this country who is willing to vocally and openly oppose the lethal and merciless policies of the “free market.” Therefore, I do not see anyone for whom I would vote.
My vote is my sacred pact with my country and fellow-citizens. I cannot cast it knowing it is an act of compromise and appeasement toward an empire run amok with hubris and obscene avarice. I do not see any strategic percentage in choosing the “lesser of evils.” Evil is evil, and there is nothing religious or supernatural about it. I define evil as the will to consume and destroy; as a narcissistic callousness toward life and freedom, and kindness and innocence. I don’t care what mask it wears, nor do I feel inclined to compromise with it, cajole it, or try to work with it in the hope that I can change its essential nature.
I’m revolted. And I will revolt. If all citizens in this country only voted for candidates who represented their interests and their principles, scarcely more than ten percent of registered voters would show up at the polls. Boycotting the vote can be an effective strategy for bringing about revolutionary change, if it is followed up with strategic refusal to serve the aims of empire.
What would take the place of the present system? We cannot even begin to address that question until we understand that we have exercised our options for changing that system from within to no avail.
The decision concerning whether or not we have reached that point is highly personal and agonizing for any socially responsible human being. I have reached my decision. Axis readers with questions as to the validity of that decision, or the process by which I made it, are welcome to challenge or question me.
At this point, however, I have to say again:
I am revolted, and I will revolt!
axisoflogic.com
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