Don’t Vote

I’m not going to vote.

In all my adult years, I’ve never said that. I’ve never thought it. I’ve held contempt for others who held the sentiment. Yet here I am, a few days before Election Day 2022, genuinely considering not voting. Not because I’m oh-so-clever that I’ve seen that “both sides are the same” or some other such pat nonsense, but because I genuinely don’t think it’ll make any difference.

Before we go further, I want to be clear: both sides are not the same. And they’re not both equally bad. Republicans, almost down to a man/woman are monsters, a vicious chimera of cruelty, authoritarianism, bigotry, ignorance, and arrogance. An abomination in the purest sense of the world. It should be obvious why I would want to vote against them (even if my Senator, Republican Tom Tillis, has been responsive to my concerns as a voter).

The problem is that, as much as I want to vote against the Republicans. I really don’t want to vote for the Democrats.

Actually scratch that. The problem isn’t that I don’t want to vote for the democrats, even though I don’t. The problem is I don’t really see a point in doing so. I don’t see them making anything better at all. I feel like a vote for the Democrats will put us in exactly the same place in 4 years as a non-vote would do.

Oh, they talk a good game. The Dems are all about pretty speeches. They say all the right things (assuming you don’t think too deeply about them) and they act like they want to work for a positive difference. Maybe they even think they are. But they never actually do anything. They simply don’t appreciate how deep-seated the problems are. They think America is just a few tweaks away from being A–OK and that’s all the difference we need.

Now, this doesn’t include progressives who do seem to appreciate the gravity of the problems facing America. The problem is that they think things end there. Thinking right and believing right and being witty on social media are their versions of progress. What’s the ratio of bills passed to tweets posted for AOC and the rest of the squad? For Bernie? Even when they do put in actual work, their solutions are shallow and poorly thought out and they think that any setbacks are caused by insufficient faith in progressive ideals. Not only that, they find contradictory data to be inconvenient at best and malicious at worst. They see disagreement as part of some great conspiracy between big business, neoliberal shills, and “The Establishment”™ TL;DR — they’re simply not serious.

Now I am not just talking about politician fecklessness in a general sense, like many of the mush brains who complain about politics do. I am talking about real issues with real solutions that the Democrats just sit on. Things like criminal justice and police accountability, environmental degradation, the Central American refugee crisis, the rebirth of fascism and right wing violence just to name a few.

Here’s a concrete example — Judge Aileen Cannon. She is laughably corrupt and twisted the law into Gordian knots so she could simp for her master D*nald Tr*mp. You could not find a non-toady, even in conservative circles, who would back up her tortured version of the law. So what did the democrats do? When even conservatives can see how rotten this woman was? They. Did. Nothing. Nothing. Could they remove all of Tr*mp´s judges? Of course not, and I’m not asking them to. Could they remove this one? Could they even try? Apparently not. They were too busy on the January 6th committee finding out sh*t we already know that they’re also not going to do anything about. I guess.

Want another example? How about ICE. Tr*mp let them run buckwild and when he got the boot they just kept on going. President Biden, to his credit, tried to reign them in. They ignored him. They ignored the President of the United States who also happens to be their boss. How did the Democrats respond? With a shrug. I mean they did try nothing, so I’m not surprised they’re all out of ideas.

And don’t you dare let them give the old “small minority” excuse. Don’t you dare let them blame it on Shoeless Joe Manchin or Krysten Karen Kyrsten Sinema. I mean they are the worst, don’t get me wrong, but they’re also not necessary. They could go around them and every single Republican if they really wanted to, if they really thought it was important. Do you know how I know? Daylight Savings Time.

Remember when that happened? Remember how they used arcane senate rules to bypass all the traditional Senatorial stonewalling nonsense? It’s possible to do it. It’s called unanimous consent. The democrats could do it to pass a whole bunch of groundbreaking legislation before the Republicans caught on. But they don’t. Because none of the things they make such pretty speeches about really matter to them. Not police reform, not federal judges, not immigrants’ rights, not environmental protection, nothing.

Even when they have bipartisan support, they still do nothing. Look at the big tech bill. It has bipartisan support, enough to pass according to its sponsor Amy Klobuchar. And yet Schumer and Pelosi won’t put it up for a vote. Why not? Because they say Klobuchar is a liar. Well press X to doubt. Someone’s definitely lying and I think the money might point to who it is.

And that’s the crux of the issue. This isn’t about politicians not catering to my every thought and opinion like a lot of non-voters think they should. It’s more than that. It’s about the Democrats never fixing anything that Republicans break. Something must be done but the Democrats simply won’t do it. Think they’ll pass a Roe v Wade law? They won’t. There’s always some reason, some excuse, but either way, the most they ever seem do is tidy up the mess and keep things from getting worse (and be clever on social media, I cannot express how tedious I find that). Even if they did, the undemocratic advantages that the Republicans have mean that they can undo it at the first time of asking. And the fact that the Democrats do nothing about said undemocratic advantages mean it won’t matter what the majority of Americans want.

Even if the Democrats win this election, and the next and the next and countless others in defiance of every law of political gravity that has ever been written or observed, the Republicans will get in eventually. And because of their toxic media ecosystem that the Democrats also don’t have any ideas for doing anything about, they’re going to be just as bad as they are now. They’re going to break everything in sight, and even if we can get them out of office after that (far from a foregone conclusion because of yet another thing the Democrats won’t do anything about) the Democrats still won’t fix anything. They’ll still think we’re just a few tweaks away from everything being fine. They’ll have the same excuses that they have now, that they had 4 years ago, 14 years ago, and every single other time in recent memory they’ve held power.

Now, I could just vote third party. I did it in 2012. Dissatisfied with the Deporter-in-Chief and the Robot Murder Army that he enjoyed using way too much. I wasn’t about to vote for Romney because, obviously, but nevertheless I could tell as far as Republicans went he was relatively benign. So I thought

“Protest vote now and if Romney wins it’s probably for the best because the next guy the Republicans put up will be an absolute monster.”

The laws of political gravity dictated that, while, Romney would get at least four if not eight years, a democrat would follow and we would be safe for at least a decade. Alternatively, the Republicans would likely win in 2016 on the back of some animal and unleash God Only Knew What. And I was, of course, 100% right.

So yes I voted for whoever the hell the green candidate was in 2012. I can’t remember because it’s completely irrelevant, didn’t make any difference, and didn’t even make me feel better. It felt pointless. So the third party if you feel the need to do something but it’s functionally indistinct from not voting at all, both politically and emotionally.

Maybe I´ll vote after all. The Republicans are still rancid and they still want to break stuff and hurt people I care about and people I don’t. But what really is the point? What difference is it actually going to make in light of all the things I’ve just said? A few years of negative peace, sans justice, where all we can do is fear the day when the forces of darkness can come and hurt us again?

If the Democrats won’t do anything, then tell me — why should I?