Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
My one and only position on how Americans should vote is that they should do whatever makes them feel nice, since that’s all US presidential elections are: an emotional pacifier to let the masses feel like they have some meaningful control over their country. It’s about feelings and nothing else.
If voting for Kamala Harris makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend you’re stopping fascism or protecting women and minorities or helping to secure a ceasefire in Gaza or whatever, then go right ahead. That’s what your vote is there for.
If voting for Donald Trump makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend you’re sticking it to the establishment or punishing the Democrats for their misdeeds or ending the wars or whatever, then by all means do so. This whole spectacle is exclusively about feelings.
If voting for a third party makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend there might be some answer in electoral politics or that the empire will ever allow anyone who truly opposes the abuses of capitalism, militarism and imperialism anywhere near power, then get in there and cast that vote. Whatever makes your feely bits feel nice.
Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re doing anything other than sucking on an emotional pacifier, because you’re not.
No matter how you vote, Democrats will continue to win approximately half the time, and Republicans will win the other half.
No matter how you vote, the ever-expanding abuses of capitalism and plutocracy will continue making life worse for ordinary Americans.
No matter how you vote, the US war machine will continue inflicting nightmarish mass military violence on people in other countries in order to maintain its globe-spanning empire.
No matter how you vote, the profit-driven systems which rule our world will continue exterminating our biosphere at an alarmingly rapid rate.
No matter how you vote, the empire’s looming confrontations with Russia and China guarantee more world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship in the near future.
No matter how you vote, people in the global south will continue to be robbed and exploited to give the western citizenry of the imperial core enough cheap stuff to keep them pacified and compliant.
No matter how you vote, the US will continue using starvation sanctions, blockades and economic warfare to bully weaker nations into obedience.
Your rulers will never give you the tools to end any of these abuses, because too much power rides on their continuation. They will only give you the tools to mollify your own frustrations and placate your discontentment by giving you a phony ritual to participate in every four years that lets you feel some degree of control.
You’re never voting your way out of this. The oligarchs and empire managers who rule you are never going to let you overthrow them by ticking a box. These sociopaths are never going to give their power to you voluntarily out of the kindness of their hearts.
Their rule will end when the project of the US empire ends — either because of outside forces beyond their control, because of inside forces beyond their control, or some combination of these two factors. It will not come about because of how anyone voted in any November. It will only happen because it was forced to happen.
You can help force this to happen by working to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist within your country. You can do this by helping to wake up as many of your countrymen as possible to the fact that their government and media are lying to them constantly, that everything they’ve been taught about their nation and their world is false, and that a better world is possible.
Lies and propaganda play an enormous role in holding the imperial power structure together, so the most effective way to help bring it down is by spreading truth and awareness. Show people how they’re being lied to, abused and stolen from. Teach them the truth about the wars, about their government, about their media, about their nation, about the people their government has designated as enemies, and about the abusive systems they all live under.
That’s real action. That kind of work matters. Your vote doesn’t matter beyond its ability to help you feel a certain way. So do whatever you need to do to feel how you want to feel on election day, and then go do some real work.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Why do you think that? There's nothing in the article that suggests she doesn't understand this. The majority of Americans still do have to vote, but the tenor of her article does not exclude it being a warning to those who have already voted as to the nature of what their vote actually means. It is not actually "advice" at all in regard to voting, but a sober description of reality. She's telling the American citizenry their vote is irrelevant. She's by a long way not the first to say so.
Caitlin's actual advice is to ignore the vote, the election, but to work at undermine propaganda and promote political activism in the community. Ultimately that's where political power always rests, tragically it almost always happens so late in the day that violence and mayhem become the necessary tools of dissent.
It's worth remembering Caitlin's advice here as we've debated Harris vs Trump on many occasions. I was shot down in flames by most of you by saying I'd prefer to see Harris as President than Trump, not because I though anything very different would happen, but that Trump, irrefutably, has a serious personality disorder and is mentally incompetent. No ordinary citizen would have Trump as leader of a local school board, or leader of any company that's not his own, or basically any position of authority in pretty well any human endeavour that you'd care to mention. I thought the risks of this were ultimately higher than the risk of mere ordinariness and inadequateness, . I may of course be wrong but we'll never ever know this, as we don't have a parallel planet on which to to do the experiment. The US has just recently got rid of one old and mentally incompetent president, the country now may vote in an another. I don't see that as an advance.
It also seems to me that too many here are forgetting Trump's record as President
Trying to ban TikTok, nepotism, oil pipeline, abandoning nuclear arms treaties, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. tax benefits to the uber rich, Steve Bannon appointment, wanted to impose a Muslim travel ban, fired his Attorney General, appoint right wing judges to the Supreme Court, claiming electoral fraud, whipping up a crowd to attack the Capitol, withdrew from Paris climate agreement, vaccines cause autism, his incompetent actually bizarre, handling of the Covid pandemic having previously scrapped the pandemic early warning system, presided over the us government's longest ever shut down, separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, got the police to spray protestors with tear gas for his bible photo op, giving pardons to his criminal associates, asked Georgi officials to rig the election, etc etc. Trump has a record - he is a repeat offender, a narcissist and an inveterate lier. . Why would anyone expect anything better next time around? .
Re: She still thinks people vote on election day ..how so?
"I was shot down in flames by most of you by saying I'd prefer to see Harris as President than Trump, not because I though anything very different would happen, but that Trump, irrefutably, has a serious personality disorder and is mentally incompetent. No ordinary citizen would have Trump as leader of a local school board, or leader of any company that's not his own, or basically any position of authority in pretty well any human endeavour that you'd care to mention"
John...have you seen a Kamala speech? It's a deeply disturbing experience. She's either an alcoholic or on very powerful medication.
-I agree with you on Trump...but I seriously wouldn't trust Kamala to take a dog for a walk never mind be President.
She still thinks people vote on election day ..how so?
Thanks Ken, I confess, I have not watched much of either candidate on TV. The last major interview I did watch was Trump vs Biden. I've pretty well given up on informing myself, watching the political self immolation of an entire country is too painful to bear. .
As I admitted, "I might be wrong", but we'll never know. I agree, Kamala Harris has no gravitas, has little political experience, and is no shining beacon of intellect nor possesses any meaningful rhetoric.
But the world history of autocrats and disaster is full of people with command, rhetoric and political efficiency.
Caitlin has it right, but even so, the citizens of the USA have a choice, my preference, over which I have no control or say, is for Kamala. Her sheer ordinariness is to me not quite the insurmountable problem that you seem to find it, and I still have the forlorn hope that she might do a bit better than you think, whereas Trump is actually mentally and politically deteriorating.
But the choice is invidious, and we are in serious trouble whoever gets the electoral college vote. And more worryingly for the UK we have a PM of political rigidity and moral deficit beholden to the US, to NATO, to Netanyahu and to Russophobia, with e Minister for Foreign Affairs of peculiar ineptness and similarly politically and morally unprincipled. God, we really miss Jeremy and George.
Re: She still thinks people vote on election day ..how so?
" Her sheer ordinariness is to me not quite the insurmountable problem that you seem to find it... "
-I didn't point to her "ordinariness"...on the contrary I suggested that her manner & behaviour propose there's something really not normal going on in there: maybe alcohol or drugs. You clearly believe an unaddled mind might make a difference but I don't reckon that's what you'd be getting with Harris either.
-It really can get any lower this Democracy stuff...a bizarre egotistical idiot man-child, a disfunctional ranting alcoholic and, well, the other one whose brain has been munched by yet actual parasitical worm...all vyeing for the throne presently occupied by a geriatric genocidal crook whose own mind is a fading palimpsist.
-This is perhaps the "whimper" as opposed to the "bang" that Empires go out on, right?
Re: She still thinks people vote on election day ..
on November 2, 2024, 1:21 pm