I will not be voting in this election, or any others for that matter.
Not because I don’t believe in democracy, nor because I don’t believe in the political rights that have been won by generations past; but because of how atrophied both have become in the mutilated abomination that we currently call our form of politics and voting. The false dichotomy that is the current forms of red and blue I believe are much more damaging and pernicious than refusing to vote for either could ever be. Our political agency has been lost, and politics is most squarely to blame.
There once was a time that our elections were actually free and fair, that voting for the right people in the right places and circumstances could make significant differences that actualized The Political; but that is no longer true of the system of politics that has replaced The Political. All that we have now is a system of false and petty differences that will ensure that the machine of government and military continues to crush on, be it under a banner of blue or red—this is the only real ‘political’ choice that we are given. As for everything else, it will continue on to masquerade and marionette towards the promise of possibilities that will never come, just as the broken dreams of change will continue to tell.
I say this to you as the US federal government funnels billions of dollars into foreign wars and shell corporations that will get their money no matter who wins. I tell you this as every budget continues to spiral out of control with every politician having more concern with how they will get their cut, than how they will stop the madness. I say this at the very moment that some child is being killed with munitions from money that each of us as citizens had our dollars financed, and with there being no possibility for any of us to end any of this—at least not as far as voting is concerned.
While I believe in democracy, it is not the one of the state provides, and while I believe in voting, it is not a principle that doing once every four years can solve anything at all. Our current system of politics is at its end, and it has been for quite a while. It is all entirely clear and apparent for anyone to see, and yet the consequence of this truth is far too profound and existential for anyone to actually speak to. That is because the terror of having to admit to ourselves that our political system has been overthrown and taken over by non-elected officials who are responsible to no one but themselves and their contingency of politics is all that matters within the engine of the state, and its demand to remain in power no matter what. The real danger is the state of emergency that has become every day of our lives, with no possible hope of it ending, no matter who is elected to whatever role it may be. The machine of the state operates in one direction, and it is to continue to gather more power for itself no matter what.
To accept the truth of the darkness that we are in is to also accept the fact that this is not something that we can vote our way out of. If we are to create the radical change that we must manifest not only to save ourselves from the destitution and squaller that the current system of politics seeks to impress upon us, but to also create a radical new hopeful future where the vote and democracy can means something again, than it is something that we must build for ourselves alone. If we are to give ourselves and posterity a future that is more free and far than the one that we were given, where The Political can open itself up to politics once again, we must accept that the current path leads to nowhere. We must demand of ourselves to go out into that darkness and seek out new and different solutions that are outside and beyond the power of the state to influence or control so that we may access The Political once again and see what the truth of voting and democracy can offer, or what new and different political systems can offer.
The Political is the radical power that all people everywhere are alway entitled to when the see that the power to create change comes not from asking for approval from the old systems; but to neutralize them with something new. While I do not know what these new systems are, or how they will be created, I do see that there is something immensely powerful in what is being built here. The internet and the possibilities that it offers along with decentralized, censorship-resistance systems imbedded with cryptography at their heart, and sovereignty in mind may just be the kind of protocol that we need to breath life into The Political once again. Few of you will believe in the possibility of such new system of politics for the future, and even fewer will participate in attempting to building such systems, but I believe it is our only hope to create a future which is more free than the one that we have been given, and it is the only hope we have now to ever access The Political again.
