Please Remember Not to Vote
CJ Hopkins
the real face of political choice
So, it’s three weeks before the US midterm elections, and it looks like we have got ourselves a horse race! That’s right, folks, once again, it’s time to start playing with those forecast maps on Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight, and obsessively following the fluctuating poll numbers of congressional candidates you have never heard of competing in districts you couldn’t locate if someone held a gun to your head. You need to start doing this immediately, if not sooner, as the stakes in these midterms could not be higher. Nothing less than the continued existence of “American democracy” hangs in the balance, so the ruling classes need every last one of us to get out there and vote for somebody!
The fact that it only marginally matters who that somebody that you vote for is should not dissuade you from voting for somebody. Voting for somebody is your civic duty, and is no less important than rooting for a sports team, or maintaining a personal favorite color, or celebrity, or brand of hemorrhoid creme. Remember, if you don’t vote for somebody, somebody else is going to win, and we can’t afford to let that happen!
Now, your choices this year are particularly exciting, despite the fact that they are exactly the same as in every other US election since approximately the 1970s. Yes, that’s right, once again, it’s the Transgender Panethnic Communists of Color versus the Old White Cisnormal Capitalist Nazis, and what a spectacle it promises to be! The Old White Cisnormal Capitalist Nazis (hereinafter the “OWCCN”) currently control … well, pretty much everything (i.e., the House, the Senate, and executive branch), and so the Transgender Panethnic Communists of Color (hereinafter the “TPCoC”) are hungry, and are looking for some serious payback after getting their butts kicked in 2016. Rumor has it, the TPCoC are preparing to unleash a “Blue Tsunami” on vulnerable OWCCN incumbents, take control of the House of Representatives, and then not impeach the ass clown President they’ve been telling everyone for the last two years is both a traitorous Russian intelligence asset and the resurrection of Adolf Hitler.
And, if that isn’t exciting enough for you already, they’ve got all kinds of other life-and-death issues to emotionally pressure you into picking a team to fanatically root for on social media, and then getting out and voting for somebody. How blatantly to humiliate illegal immigrants, how affluent you have to be to obtain an abortion, how much interest banks can charge when you pay for your chemo with an Amazon card, and which pronouns law enforcement officers are required to use to refer to people whose homes they barge into and unintentionally murder, are just a few of the many “hot-button” questions requiring your democratic input.
Other questions, like whether to invade or just strategically bomb Iran or Syria, or some other non-ball-playing Middle East country, or pour billions more in military aid into Israel, or sell billions in weapons to Saudi Arabia, or foment a coup in Venezuela, or maintain almost eight hundred military outposts in over seventy foreign countries all around the world, are questions that do not require your input. The global capitalist ruling classes, the corporations they own and operate, their friends in the government and the intelligence agencies, and the corporate media will take care of all that. Same goes for those Wall Street banks, and the next looming global financial crisis, and those mass extinctions, and this wacky weather. The grown-ups with the fancy suits and haircuts are handling all that complicated stuff. You just worry about all those other issues, and get out there and vote for somebody!
Seriously, though, for those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of U.S. politics, our election cycle, and these midterm elections, and thus do not have the slightest idea what I’m even referring to, here’s what’s going on in a nutshell …
On November 6, 2018, Americans will be returning to the polls to exercise their inalienable right to choose between two corporate-financed, ruling class-vetted political stooges competing for the chance to pretend to represent them in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and in various gubernatorial, municipal, and somewhat lesser distinguished chambers. A selection of non-ruling-class-vetted candidates will also appear on a handful of ballots. Americans will be free to vote for such candidates, as long as they realize they are just wasting their time, and possibly damaging the “serious” candidates, which the corporate media will remind them they are doing at every available opportunity.
See, unlike in backward European countries, where some semblance of a parliament still exists, and there are actual campaign finance restrictions and limits on televised campaign advertising, in the United States, where everyone is free, voting for non-ruling-class-vetted candidates, in a midterm or any other election, is about as effective as voting for a sandwich … or for, you know, some narcissistic billionaire ass clown who swears he is going to “drain the swamp,” and build “a beautiful wall,” or whatever. The system is designed to guarantee that no matter which ruling class stooge you vote for, and even if you vote for a character like Trump just to stick it to the establishment for once, it makes no difference … or, OK, very little difference.
The reason for this is not a big mystery. When a seat in the Senate goes for ten million dollars and a seat in the House for over a million, and there are no real restrictions on campaign financing, and the corporate-owned media decide in advance which candidates will be given airtime, and considered “serious” by the mainstream pundits who work for the handful of corporations that own the vast majority of newspapers, television and radio stations, and internet platforms that control the flow of information to the American public … well, it would kind of be a little odd, wouldn’t it, if authentic anti-ruling-class candidates were allowed to enter and compete in that system?
Most Americans understand this, which is why nearly half of them do not vote. It’s humiliating enough to be forced to live, and attempt to support a family, and so on, in a savage, neoliberal marketplace with virtually no social cohesion whatsoever, and in which the only real operative value is money, without also having to debase themselves by participating in the simulation of democracy that the capitalist ruling classes need to maintain in order to pretend that they are not just social parasites with a lot of goons and guns.
Which brings me to the point of this essay. See, normally, I try like hell to avoid telling people what to do in my columns, but, after my last one, a number of readers wrote in asking for advice, so I’m going to make an exception, just this once.
Here’s my advice. You’re not going to like it.
Do not vote. For anyone. At all. Tell all your friends not to vote for anyone. Join the hundreds of millions of Americans who refuse to participate in the simulation of democracy. Take time off from work to vote, and then do not vote. Go see a movie, or have lunch with someone you haven’t seen in a while, or take a nice, long walk in the woods or something. Whatever you do, do not vote. Seriously. Please stop voting for these people. They’re not your friends. They mean you ill. They will shake your hand, kiss your baby, then sell you to the first pharmaceutical lobbyist, or military industrial lobbyist, or Israeli or Saudi Arabian lobbyist, that waltzes into their office with a check, or that threatens to turn their voters against them.
You probably think I’m kidding. I’m not. Do not vote in these midterm elections. Or in any other American elections. Not while the system remains as it is. If you really want to vote, move to Europe, where at least there are still parliamentary structures, and a decent variety of political parties, and some restrictions on campaign financing and advertising. All you’re doing when you vote in America is reifying a simulation of democracy, and so perpetuating the system as it is.
Oh, and while you’re at it, if you happen to work for any of those pharmaceutical companies, or any of those weapons manufacturers, or their suppliers, or for an investment bank, or a hedge fund, or private equity firm, or any other company, corporation, firm, consultancy, or department of government that is central to keeping the American political and economic system going as it is, quit your job and do something else. Seriously, go into the office today (or get up from your desk right now) and quit, and go find something else to do with the gift of your sentient life on this planet. I realize that might be a scary proposition, but that’s what it’s going to take to change things, a lot of people deciding they have had it and are not going to play the game anymore.
That’s pretty much all the advice I’ve got. Sorry … I told you you weren’t going to like it.
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Not voting IS voting – for NOTA. Everyone knows there’s an election, everyone votes who thinks the outcome affects them enough. Staying away is not therefore passive, it signals a definite position on the issues and the choices available. That said, this anarchist doesn’t subscribe to the opposite argument either – that it’s the duty of anarchists not to vote. Often I do vote when a particular minor party is identified with a single issue, simply to affect debate, to help keep that particular issue addressed. Voting is fine for propaganda purposes.
Whatever. Your cynicism has no point nor purpose. And if you are equating previous presidents with the thing we have in the White House now you must be high. Or need to be.
I disagree. You should definetly vote but definetly not for either the Democrats or the Republicans. That way you have voted against the duopoly and its agreed agenda. Not voting only signals submission to that agenda.
There is never (ever) any good excuse for not voting!!!- they are all cry baby cop-outs based on the obvious and inescapable fact that all humans and any society is less than perfect. Those on the sidelines should acknowledge that they have forfeited the right to be critical of those who undertake the risks, burdens and consequences of actual involvement and engagement. The extremus version of this argument would condemn and abolish all voting forever in favor of some form of permanent disenfranchisement and dictatorship.
You are wrong, and here is why. Currently in the US the only choice is Rep or Dem, and both represent a completely corrupt system beholden to Wall Street and Corporations and the Military Indistrial Complex. That is not democracy. The only sane choice in this situation is to not vote at all. Currently the voter turnout is already incredibly low, 50% give or take a few points. If enough people refuse to vote and that figure falls to 35% it will be clear to everyone that the establishment does not have a mandate to govern.
But govern they will. With an iron fist.
When the masking of any true governance can no longer be pretended and pass as real, the iron fist is the raw underbelly of what was always there. I Invite re-choosing the word we choose and use to extend a true meaning rather than subscribe or vote for the false. True governance will always be resisted or attempted to be blocked by false or toxic investments deemed too big to fail. Governance of our own mind and affairs may reveal a similar pattern to what we hate writ large in our world. Where else would it come from? The corrupt will promote and assert ‘anti corruption’ agenda or crusade as a smokescreen and even token sacrifice, but they will not support true accountability or transparency. None the less we are accountable for what is ours, or have taken that does not belong to us. Because blame and punishment works a… Read more »
Voting under ‘Free Market capitalism’, MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. It is an exercise in futility, hypocrisy and self and mass delusion. Under capitalism ONLY the rich owners of society have any influence, and they call ALL the shots.
Welcome to the turkey shoot. Remember to get out and vote for Christmas! In this unipolar centralist world making Amerikka great again is a cinch. Just think all that debt you are carrying is keeping the engine of capitalism going! Keeping communism at bay. No matter if you’re dead and buried before you can enjoy the dream. Letting you vote is out way of saying thank you to you from the swamp…
Nice one CJ наслаждаться пивом [enjoy the beer]!
Actually, the really important races are down ticket. That’s where you get the local council screwing up your city by selling it to developers, the School Board imposing censorship on curricula (and hassling teachers) and, most important of all, the Secretary of State for your state that decides how the electoral map should be gerrymandered and how many voters to suppress. The Federal House and Senate are important, sure, but our neglect of those boring races helps to enable the bad stuff; without the tacit support of the States they’d have a lot tougher time imposing their corporatist agendas.
So vote. Its important.
The vast majority of the world is not a democracy. Our governments are called democracies but that is just a rhetorical trick, in reality they are just corrupt concentrations of power. In the original democracy in Athens, the citizens proposed and voted on the laws and also ran the legal system. There was no need for fake “representatives” in a parliament to make decisions and laws on others behalf. People need to put in the additional work to run their own direct democracy and stop hoping for a political saviour. Any politician that comes along is likely to be corrupt to start with, as it is those whom are most willing to engage with corruption that have the most to gain from being elected to a position of power and therefore logically will strive hardest to obtain that power. Even if they are not corrupt to start with they will… Read more »
”If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
This is good advice. The charade of elections not only do not make a difference, they actually give the ruling classes more of a mandate to act badly – on the basis that ‘the people voted for us’ and ‘we’re a democracy, unlike xx’. They can even begin to pass off the blame on to the voters for being ‘stupid’ enough to put them in office.
It’s also interesting that some countries that are not full democracies actually do more for their peoples than those that are – some Asian and Middle Eastern countries for example, which have invested heavily in public services.
The so-called ‘liberal democratic’ regimes produce Governments of unmitigated viciousness, stupidity and Evil. The problem begins with the real distribution of power, which in neo-liberal capitalist kakistocracies lies entirely in the hands of the rich, who own the politicians, the media sewer, and the economy. The electorate is comprised of 50% sub-median intelligences, and many who are personally vicious, racist, misogynistic, sectarian, homophobic etc, ie those who vote out of stupidity, ignorance, greed and fear. Moreover, foreign interference is rife, principally from the USA and the other Five Eyes global overlords, and from Israel and its plethora of Fifth Columns spread throughout the West. ‘Elections’ are cavalcades of lies, threats, bribes, character assassination and media bias. Once elected, the regimes rule for the rich, almost exclusively. The ONLY things that matter are those who increase elite wealth and power, and even existential catastrophes like the ecological collapse of the planet’s… Read more »
“One could not even imagine a worse and more destructive and Evil system” Ah – but I see you are working on it Mulga! If evil could be undone of its foundation, what would you do with yourself? The term deceiver is not without usefulness as long as it doesn’t become something set only OUTSIDE the mind. If you hold that evil really IS the nature of reality then why not just ‘get real’ and stop pretending to be anything else? BTW – this line of thought may hold for some who feel no way back from terrible acts or omissions. I hold that you have and are the power to give your life and everything in it, all the meaning it has for you, and that you do not have to let your life be defined and dictated by others, external conditions or past event. This may be a… Read more »
Do you ever get tired of your own drivel, or is that not part of your programming?
I note the intended insult milosevic, but you have mistakenly addressed it to me. If you desire communication, engage. I am willing to listen to you. Propaganda is giving false witness by which you condemn yourself. I don’t condemn you. If my posts are not for you – why do you open them to your attention? If you take issue with my posts why not say so in ownership of your feelings – and perhaps why – rather than assigning your hate to my person as if to unload it and smear me by association? So many like to rant on as if righteously about ‘evil psychopaths’ but show no capacity to identify in or recognise the other as soon as the other triggers their pet hates or activate a sense of defence against threat. I hold cause and effect is a law beneath all that is, and that no… Read more »
If you desire communication, engage. I am willing to listen to you.
No, I don’t believe any useful purpose can be served by debating Cognitive Infiltrators. Nor is the content of your oeuvre specific enough to actually engage with; it’s simply meaningless gobbledygook, as I said previously.
It’s sufficient to note that this variety of New Age, psychologizing, “everybody’s guilty, so nobody’s guilty” discourse, has long been used to obscure and excuse the crimes of the ruling class. Mulga Mumblebrain provided a concise and specific description of how neoliberal capitalism actually operates, which is the sort of idea that Cognitive Infiltrators are especially concerned to mystify and obfuscate. And immediately thereafter, you show up, and proceed to do exactly that.
Funny how that works.
David Ray Griffin — Cognitive Infiltration
PS: Those who want the short response can always start at the last para. The conventions of the mind are not rigidly set rules. Be free to alight in a vote for freedom from false framed definitions that seem real by reaction but lack substance. I don’t recognize the charge against me of ‘cognitive infiltration’ but I do recognize that infiltration, funding and subversion of any movement of being renders it a proxy force or captured opposition. Therefore I an vigilant against deceits and write in the willingness to undo them. I also see this in the reframing of the meanings of others by which to smear and invalidate them from ‘debate’ made famous by Kathy Newman’s; “so you’re saying..so you’re saying..”so you’re saying..” when none of her reframing of what Peterson said were true of what he said but were intent and attempt to trick reaction by which to… Read more »
To binra – are you judging and correcting someone for judging and correcting others?
No I am reflecting that judgement is an act or use of mind that has consequences to the capacity to evaluate its choice with a true awareness of consequence. If we cannot even speak of something but be attacked for ‘hate crime’ we know that hate rules the mind that speaks thus and there is no one listening. The mind in defence of its ‘right to attack’ is quick to use anything said that it feels threatened by as ammunition against the one who says it. Not least as the assertion that IT is the victim. But that is not a communication or relationship. That is the intent to block or distort communication and withhold relationship under the guise of communication. My sense of ‘hate speech’ as in-valid communication is where an unchecked incitement to hate works the undermining OF communication and relationship. I hold integrity to be a quality… Read more »
I don’t disagree with many of your ideas but if you can’t put forward, in two or three paragraphs, a cogent argument as to why you disagree with the premise of this article, then you should go elsewhere to express your opinions.
This issue put forward here is clear – if you vote you support a corrupt system, if enought people don’t vote, the system will be exposed for the sham it is.
Dear Neil, why ‘must’ comments be framed by the assertion of the article – as if that is the only way of thinking or seeing the idea of ‘vote, choice or voice’. A false framed choice is NO choice but presents AS IF making a difference while ensuring nothing really changes. I have repeatedly indicated in many comments that we live and vote FROM a premise that is our true freedom once uncovered AS a recognition OF freedom. But ‘this kingdom’ is not IN the world of invested power struggle, being a sovereign will. The phishing of identity theft is the false flag of reaction – perhaps in seeking a self inflation – to be made ‘great’ again, but more often against evils that must be checked or denied. With regard to the apparent dilemma of such a world I refer to Jesus’ differentiation of God and Caesar. I know… Read more »
Binra, it depends on one’s temperament. The Buddha maintained his equanimity but Jesus wept and became angry; though both men dedicated their lives to the relief of suffering. In first year Philosophy we were taught the political difference between Aristotle and Plato: the former recommending a purely theoretical approach because Arystotle could not imagine God doing anything beside contemplating His own perfection; while Plato regarded practical politics as the duty of an enlightened citizen, even at the risk of embarrassment, expense, mental slog and bodily risk.
Yes, many facets of One, vexarb. Though of course not a one alone, nor a one to which an other can be. To be awake in any aspect of being is to know rather than perceive. To be asleep in any of them is to see conflict rather than unity – because they are all valid perspectives and the attempt to assert one over another is like pitting joy against freedom. I don’t recognize or align with a weeping or angry Jesus. But I do recognize that any revelation of truth is misinterpreted and subverted by the ‘world’ to reinforce an identity in fear, struggle and sacrifice rather than serve a direct transcendence special to none. Sweeping out the Temple is interpreted as political anger by the angry who seek a kingdom in the world as ‘power struggle’, but I see it as a teaching for transmuting the energy of… Read more »
The only prediction I can make is, that whatever the outcome, it will ‘prove’ Russia has interferred in the election. If the Deep State candidates lose, it will be evidence of Russian interference. If they win, then they would have gained more votes if not for Russian interference.
There is a facade or directed perception of the idea of a (voting) choice and there is a genuine choice. The facade’s function is to engage and divert you from a genuine choice by framing you into terms in which no real choice is available – but which plays off one against another. As long as we are framed in the mind of Caesar we will give unto Caesar even if we think to be free in defiance. The world’s thinking is backwards. Living FROM the true of you is the basis from which to attract and create a more truly aligned world-experience. In this sense the thought system of Ideas of self-definition that you live from and make real by acting as if true of you, is always a vote. Much of the world’s voting is self cancelling because the attempt to serve two Masters of mutually excluding goals… Read more »
if you want to get your ideas across, learn how to express them succinctly. Currently you are deflecting from the important idea of this discussion with a lot of waffle.
Deflecting attention from important ideas is the entire purpose of Cognitive Infiltration, whether the means employed are waffles, pancakes, hot air, or cowpies.
David Ray Griffin — Cognitive Infiltration
Deflecting attention from the open consideration of the true nature of ideas (as the undoing of false framing assertions or dictate), can only resort to smears because it HAS no substance – but links to a source by which to claim ‘authority’ of insight, and yet mis-applies the insight in seeking to use it as a weapon of personal agenda in exactly the way the critique was intended to expose! Now if vengeance is the purpose to which all your ideas must serve, and thus become ‘IMPORTANT’ then anyone not supporting your purpose becomes your enemy or obstruction. I see in that last sentence a critique of the ‘anti-Life’ mentality that wreaks destruction in our thought, word and deed. I don’t pretend that we do not all at time or oft times feel the desire for vengeance – but I do not accept it as the ‘god’ to which all… Read more »
making attack on my person
I would never make an attack on your person, because I don’t believe that “you” actually are a person, to any significant extent. Your output has all the signs of algorithmically-produced nonsense verbiage, based on the vocabulary and text patterns of New-Age psycho-babble.
A nonsense-generator based on Post-Modern literary criticism has been in operation for over two decades; if it were reprogrammed with your characteristic vocabulary, its output would be indistinguishable from yours. After a few individualized modifications by deep-state Cognitive Infiltrators working from some military base, it could be sent out into the world to disorient, disinform, disrupt, and derail opposition to the neoliberal program.
And so here we are.
Postmodernism Generator
https://www.rt.com/usa/415609-us-army-ai-language-bot/
milosevic: Would it be the benefit of a doubt to consider that you are so superficially motivated as to act and speak without any real sense of what you are saying, and its consequences, or do I accept my postings are given tribute by your attempt to invalidate and smear without in any way engaging in any point or issue in them? To claim ‘there is no attack on a person’ just because YOU SAY say to me; ‘you are not a real person’ and then smear by association with paid disinformation agents or A.I bots, is a signature OF just such a disinformation, divide and degrade intent as you accuse. You are thus ‘outing’ you own intentions, not mine. ‘Not-real’ persons – under any kind of invalidating assertions, can be lied to, cheated, or treated inhumanely – even to mark out for torture and killing – without involving any… Read more »
Oh come down from ‘on High’ and accept that there are more ways to see than as your thinking currently dictates. If all you want is a campaign for non voting then of course anyone who doesn’t join it will seem to weaken it. But you set it up that way and I am not ‘intending to undermine you or your campaign’. Also in any page commenting there are conversations that arise that may well be strictly off topic to whatever the main gist of an article – but partake of the general and repeated themes of which your article is a slice – namely of a corrupted system running on deceit. The ‘post truth politics’ rules out participation in anything but a sideshow for anyone but insider insiders – in regard to the unfolding of their new world order. But IDEAS are not hidden or fenced off excepting by… Read more »
In America, don’t the Diebold voting machines vote for you? Or was that just for Hitlerry? 😀
In Russian dictatorship, you vote for One Party State.
In Amerikan democracy, One Party State votes for you.
Sage advice.
Meanwhile back here in the good old oh so – “exceptional” – U.S.A. – as reported from the WSW: (“An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history. . . . Of the 102 primary elections to choose the Democratic nominees in these competitive districts, 44 involve candidates with a military-intelligence or State Department background,”) no doubt MSM like the New York Times and Washington Post will recast this sordid and frightening state of affairs as some sort of bonanza for democracy, as in – “look at all the pre-approved choices one has! One can vote for ex-CIA, ex-Pentagon, ex-National Security Council or ex-State Department!” Amazingly this cast of characters constitutes… Read more »
It’s better to be born rich than gifted
The least-gifted children of high-income parents graduate from college at higher rates than the most-gifted children of low-income parents.
Washington Post, By Andrew Van Dam
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/2018/10/09/its-better-be-born-rich-than-talented/?noredirect=on&noredirect=on&utm_term=.b4c2bb0566b2&__twitter_impression=true
The following quote may not be as famous, but it underlines the script’s prescience… Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency… Read more »
Er, scratch that one.
First time I tried posting it (see below), it didn’t appear, so I re-posted. Then I saw the “Your comment will appear eventually” bit in the comment instructions.
D’oh!
Thanks for the quotation, Tim, I never heard of that 1970s film, Network, but it sounds even more relevant today.
There were truly some tremendous films coming out of Hollywood in the 70s. Network, Apocalypse Now, and my favourite, Taxi Driver.
great film!
I vote for national offices as follows: Eleanor Roosevelt for president, Karl Marx for US Senate, the rest of the Marx family (Chico, Groucho, Gummo, Harpo, and Zeppo) for other national and major offices. I always vote for real candidates for local offices.
CJ Hopkins is a writer. Nice! It would be even nicer if a thinker would turn up to suggest a less passive remedy for people afflicted with Democracy, “the best form of bad government”.
Or vote blank. That is what I do after I read the following book.
http://www.50ayear.com/2013/02/18/4-seeing-by-jose-saramago/
I do believe in the voting system, but since there is no choice, I vote blank.
The voting illusion is why there is a system and the ‘system’ always serves itself. There’s a page on limited government at freeblr.org best I’ve seen. It looks like have to dwnld a big pdf to save so I just typed best sentences and also printed to paper. I think another problem is some still look to ‘media’ which also serves itself. We forget how to be our own media. Since long coversations are difficult because of ‘smart’ fones I figured out to put info and few web links etc on notes with copy pass on at bottom to hand people, mailboxes etc, better then explaining and others have something to do. We are always fed false solutions ‘boycott’, ‘prepare’ etc don’t do anything, and don’t vote is similar though the article is important as some still ‘vote’ though they know it’s delusion. Actual change takes doing something instead of… Read more »
Like the guy in ‘Network’ saying he can’t take it anymore!!
Howard Beale, ”I want you to go to your windows, open them up and shout, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.’ Network. a classic and prescient film.
The following quote from Network isn’t as famous, but it encapsulates, 42 years later, the script’s prescience… Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international… Read more »
The late George Carlin summed it up many years ago. Not a lot changed since
https://youtu.be/qxsQ7jJJcEA
Imagine if they held a humiliating farce and nobody came…
Is imagining something ‘voting’ for it? So I wonder CAN we imagine something and hold it in our heart without then invalidating it in thought? One such is the ‘no point voting for a minority candidate because its a wasted vote’, or effectively allowing the WORST CANDIDATE! to get in. Can we hold our own course because it is true of us or do we abandon our true because we are easily persuaded it is futile or lowering of defence against great evils? Is there a power in standing in who we are because we are instead of standing somewhere else in order to escape feared outcomes? or manipulate apparently positive outcomes? Is the journey of finding out who we are by acting from it, more of what our true function is than trying to change others and becoming identified in polarised identity conflict – in which who we DON’T… Read more »