Election parties are just excuses for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres right?

After reading a series of articles on voting, the latest of which (including links to the rest of the series) can be viewed here, I decided to publish my thoughts written a few months ago after the Mid-Term elections in the United States.

I woke up October 5th. I heard a few laughs, even sharing some myself, over the list of new places to quasi-legally smoke pot, and over the absolute absurdity that nearly every state and election had gone towards Republicans. However, I quickly took this to heart because I did not vote, I never have (Full disclosure: I voted for Ross Perot in a mock election in grade school). I really wondered if I should reconsider my stance that voting is not effective when the votes are manipulated and the candidates are quite the same given my beliefs and goals in the world, both as an American citizen, and as an anti-American in principle. Should I have voted? Should I have encouraged my friends and family to do so as well?

I didn’t read too much into this because it was, frankly, depressing. I stumbled upon the statistic that roughly 2/3rds of registered voters simply did not vote. This, coupled with the news and evidence of ongoing voter suppression and the increased spending and ability to simply buy candidates for both parties, instead ended up cementing my ideas on voting.

There is no cohesive Left in America. When 2/3rds of registered voters don’t vote, this is far different from the problem of no motivation for millions to even register. Pro-War, Pro-Corporation, Pro-Capitalism, none of these are Leftist policies. Let’s not make it more of a discussion than it ought to be. There is no progressive party to vote for, piecemeal milestones are not going to add up to an ideal for people to believe in. It’s likely more depressing than empowering for example, that it has taken so long for acknowledgment of the continuing need for equality measures in all aspects of our society, or the decriminalization of acts that disproportionately end up causing harassment, further poverty, or prison and even death for minorities.

One would think that folks that care about their community, their world, etc, would see through the pandering to progressive movements that the American left utilizes to further the causes of the particular corporations that fund them. One supposes folks could at least by now view them as equal to the hate-mongering and unabashed patriotism the American right utilizes towards the same end.

The candidates for nearly any extant party or any likely to emerge in the immediate future, are identical, out of necessity. The network of machinations and opportunity that fuels politics and capital requires a facade put forth atop the true actions and intents of any entrenched interests, as dictated by both law, and unfortunately, societal expectations.

If dissent is expressed today – our dissatisfaction with our representation outside of social media and actual protests and ‘letters to our congressmen’ – it is expressed by what appears to be apathy or abject disappointment not only in our representatives but in our range of motion, and the system in place to remedy our dilemma; we vote by not voting.

Counter-intiutive as this may seem, there appears to be no mechanism in place to unseat incumbents. Those in power that are overwhelmingly disapproved of are nearly impossible to reliably replace in light of the ability to manipulate who can or cannot register to vote, the gerrymandering of districts; given the ability to buy elections outright owing to the enshrined personhood of corporations and the unlimited spending allowed by lobbyists.

Voting is said to be this mechanism, though it has long been furtively subverted, while retaining the pretense of its former intent. Voting every two, or four years for one or the other corporately funded parties, has clearly reached its final, or at least penultimate limitations, as millions have simply decided to no longer labor under the notion that they have such a choice as voting purports, and indeed should have embodied.

What sort of effect this rallying of non-voting shall have, we have yet to discover. Another Presidential election is on its way, and as voter turn out tends to be higher for at least that spectacle, (since it receives much more media attention, though ironically has less effect on the immediate circumstances of peoples daily lives) we wait to see if ‘not voting’ increasingly becomes a trend, if we will be able to sum up that election too, with a headline about how many more states we can now privately smoke marijuana in, as opposed to one that serves as a representation or summation of real progress.

We need more than just real issues to vote on, issues generated from within the communities and the mouths of the peoples voting on said issues, we need more than just a good candidate that we believe can help carry these ideas to fruition. We need both of those to be sure, but we need an environment in which these things can possibly exist, or long survive.

We need education, clarity, and passion. I accept the fact that voting could, and should potentially bring this world about, I face it head on and I push it aside, and I refuse to lean on it as motivation, or as explanation of how we shall better the world. I believe the obsession with how voting should be working, removes the responsibility that human beings have to one another from its internal origins, and places that responsibility on an external, mechanical action.

If only for the abounding arguments over the minutia of the process itself, we must consider thus far, the hyper-focus on the particular man made process of voting, an ill-suited method towards fostering the sort of progress and involvement we seek. The path to a community with a focus on involving itself in the betterment of all, must begin with the actual freedom to do so. Freedom from the disparity of wealth that allows for conditions in which the people are paid meager wages, and those they work for hoard not just enough to fund all the causes they and their communities could ever think of, but enough to simply sit on the bulk of this money, and to still pay lobbyists and lawmakers to prevent any such causes to come to fruition at all, if they so choose.

The motivation to share knowledge, experience and power with one another is self-generated, and its expression through voting is too easily manipulated. Voting at the very least needs reinvented, and I know not how best to reshape it, though I know that relying on it as an argument and as a method towards progress is to me, a bit too convenient.

The relation between these two notions; that voting can, and should be effective, and that it is not simply made so by claiming that it must be, is difficult to reconcile.