I don't vote.
It's not easy for me to say that, because I have always taken my voting rights very seriously... ever since voting for Walter fucking Mondale in my first-ever election. But I didn't vote in either of the two primaries California had this year, and I have no real intention to vote in November.
I chose, very consciously, to withdraw my support from a society I see as immoral and a system that I feel hoodwinks people into thinking they have a voice. The vote is rigged ten ways from Sunday: not necessarily through outright stealing of the election (though that has happened and will happen again), but by controlling what candidates get on the ballot, through using the money primary to marginalize outsiders, and through the whole superstructure of finance and control that makes legislators pawns of the power elite.
It's clear that neither of the men who are running for President has any intention of making any change to the imperial policy of the United States to order the world as it - and it alone - sees fit. In 2012, and in 2016, we will still be in Iraq and threatening other nations in that part of the world - barring of course, some cataclysm almost too awful to think about and growing more likely by the day.
The possibility of the United States going through some kind of awakening -- of all its citizens, elites and plebs, suddenly realizing that our current course can only end in tragedy for ourselves and for the world -- is so remote as to not be worth considering. I mean, if there were some movement, even the blastocyst of a fistula of an embryo of a movement, in that direction, I'd give it whole-hearted support. But there is nothing like that. There's TV and sports and the quadrennial reality show we call Election.
So I'm out.
At 5:04 EDT today, 11 June 2008, an Aer Lingus jet left JFK for Dublin, with a connecting flight to Rome early tomorrow morning. I was supposed to be on that flight. My plan was to leave this sick, sad society behind and make a new start in the country of my ancestors. For a whole host of reasons, I chose not to go. And it's still not clear why, but I had - and have - a strong intuition that my karma lay in these here United States. A big reason for my upcoming journey, uprooting myself from a comfortable existence in "America's Finest City," is to find out why.
Since I was a teenager riding the Hi-Speed Line into Philadelphia and walking to the Wooden Shoe bookstore to soak up radical literature, I've been searching for a different way. And through college and communes and back-to-the-land in Hawai'i I've tried to find that way, so far without success. But as Edison once said after yet another of his experiments went wrong: "I have not failed at each attempt; rather I've succeeded at discovering another way not to invent an electric lamp."
It really might take the total collapse of American society to shake things up to the point at which they can change. And I've dreaded it every time I've come to that conclusion: with all the guns in this country - and the increasing number of well-trained, hardened warriors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan - a new American Civil War would make the breakup of Yugoslavia look like pro wrestling. But we are headed down the Slip-n-Slide to disaster at an alarming rate, and there has to be something on the other side of that - something other than a new Fascism and culture war - for people to look towards.
There is another way - a uniquely American way - for us to live with each other. Consumerism and the lust for power has deformed the ancient spirit of community and turned people into drones who work until they drop, then go home and narcotize themselves with drink, with drugs, and with American Idol. It does not have to be that way.
I'm going to be thinking a lot and talking to a lot of people all across the country about what that might look like. Eurocommunism won't work, not will Latin American-style socialism or any other system that works in different countries. Deep in the cultural DNA of this country, however, is the ethic of cooperation and struggle that brought us the eight-hour day, cleaned up the slaughtehouses and began the still-incomplete work of extending full civil rights to women and people of color.
The question - and it's an open question to me - is whether anything, even a full-blown apocalyptic collapse of society, can reawaken that spirit, if only on a very small scale.
I'm very curious.
3 comments:
Wow! You are raising some wonderful questions and thoughts here. I can see you are very much a free-thinker. I find your posts very outspoken and I admire that. You are choosing to NOT go through life asleep at the wheel. For one to awaken and "question", even if they don't have the answers, is very noble and necessary for change. In doing what you are doing you have already opened the door to change. I will be interested to hear what you learn, see and experience as you travel the country. I think you will find it a remarkable experience.
Voting is one way to peacefully change things - and you make a good argument that it does NOT change things. But when you have a huge power like the USA, even picking a marginally better candidate can make a HUGE difference.
For example, Gore would have continued the killing sanctions in Iraq, but likely would have stopped the 9-11 attack, and would not have started up a war in Afghanistan and Iraq..... so, people still would have died, but LESS of them.
I always vote - there is always someone that I respect that I can vote for. I may vote for McKinney this time around, or maybe Obama. But voting is free, easy, safe, and gives Americans a chance to influence our country - which many foreigners wish they could do.
On top of that, I have friends who worked during Freedom Summer, and suffered greatly (including burying friends) to get the right to vote for people in the USA.
I say "vote".... no matter what.
voting for candidates is a waste of time, no matter who wins we're always left with a 'representative' government that doesn't even pretend to represent us. i'll vote on ballot initiatives and anything else where it's direct democracy, but i'm never again going to vote for a politician.
like you, i've thought about leaving america for a long time, probably will eventually. but, also like you, i can't help thinking there's still work for me to do here. besides which, there's no place left to run too. europe isn't as crazy fucked as america, but it's close and getting closer all the time.
this whole 'western civilization' thing has gone so far off course we're almost guaranteed to hit an iceberg sooner or later, so i try to spend my time building lifeboats. everything worthwhile out of that tradition - freedom, human dignity, individual and human rights, has been left by the wayside as people cling to all the things that are slowly but surely killing them; gluttony, sloth, greed, avarice. it's like a medieval morality play about what happens when a society forsakes reason and elevates the seven deadly sins to virtues. i'd be tempted to think it's satire except no one's laughing.
I don't think it's possible any more to take down the empire directly, but maybe if we can put forward some really good alternatives and start building the infrastructure for a better world, we'll be able to at least salvage something when mainstream america falls apart.
as for what form that takes, that's up to 'we the people' to decide. i just want to make sure that when that decision is being made all the options are on the table. otherwise, people will just pick up the pieces and go right back to doing what they've always done. we have to have at least a working model of what a better society could look like in place before our neighbors will take us seriously instead of dismissing us as crazy dreamers.
like your title said - creating "the new society within the shell of the old".
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