Many of you know that I'm generally opposed to voting as a mechanism of societal change. I think it is, at best, a rigged system that rarely produces real progress. At worst, it's a perverse attempt to legitimize mob control over the lives of others.
Many of you know that I'm generally opposed to voting as a mechanism of societal change. I think it is, at best, a rigged system that rarely produces real progress. At worst, it's a perverse attempt to legitimize mob control over the lives of others. Mostly, it breeds complacency and a false sense of one having completed their "civic duty" by standing in a line and punching a ballot once every four years. People who see their guy win usually do little to challenge the status quo in between elections, and they throw bullshit platitudes in the faces of people who fight the system in apolitical ways. I still feel this way, and I do not for a second believe the right to vote between two abhorrent choices constitutes a duty to do so. Sorry, but I don't feel obligated to play the game that gets consistently worse each time we elect "the lesser evil" and move the Overton window a little closer to comic book evil.
However, I believe the United States is in a uniquely disasterous position right now, and the current president has both an extreme capacity for harm and a demonstrably high propensity for causing it. In addition to bungling a massive pandemic and enacting policies that destroy lives (which, let's be honest, his predecessors also did), he's opened a Pandora's box of seemingly dormant shitty ideas. By legitimizing them with his sanction, he's helped create a cultural Hellscape in which we're re-debating whether women, minorities, and LGBTQ people deserve rights.
I have no illusions that a Biden administration is going to be anything close to good. If he's elected, those of you with integrity will be out there, with me, protesting his awful policies in the years to come, despite the fact that he's better than Trump (a low bar if there ever was one).
But this is a triage situation for the US, and I cannot see a scenario in which four more years of Trump doesn't cause irreparable harm to innocent people.
I'm not proud, I'm not promoting voting, and I don't want a damn sticker. But I'd feel like a hypocrite if I didn't acknowledge that I did it. It's just that bad this time.