One man, no vote
I'm not gonna vote for president this Nov, just as I didn't in 2004, and 2008.
Tl;dr: my vote doesn't matter (and if you're reading this and are eligible to vote, neither does yours), and I don't like being used in a shill.
Afa as the shill, that means I would vote even if my vote only had a symbolic value, but only if the game was fair. It's not.
Details break down as follows.
1. I object to the electoral college. The president is essentially elected by 1 - 2M lower middle class people living in 6 - 8 states, neither of which is California. Given this campaign's spending, each of these people's votes is worth $1-2K. Mine is worth $0, or sufficiently close. Thank you, and fuck you.
2. I object to the US two-party system on the grounds that it doesn't represent me as a theoretical sample voter (as physical Alex Zuzin, I don't find that being represented by a political party is a major concern). For example, I'm pro-reproductive rights, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun rights, pro-financial controls, pro-legal drugs, pro-legal prostitution, pro-lower drinking age, pro-publicly funded healthcare, pro-social safety net, pro-strict separation of church and state, pro-right-to-die. Additionally, I'm
3. I also object to the US two-party system on the basis of it generally being bad for this country. I'm aware that a 3+ party system has its own significant drawbacks, starting with Condorcet's Paradox, which tends to leave the majority winners beholden to the minority swing vote. But I'm not claiming a third party would be of political benefit - rather, a cultural one. Two-prong systems polarize. In the US, in the climate of anti-intellectualism, overt religiosity and the cult of Americana, you get a perfect storm, or in the immortal words of Paul Newman, "failure to communicate" (c).
4. Finally, I object - and this goes to the core of my reticence - to what the US liberal democracy has become: a vanity fair of special interests. It was gonna become this all along, as has been well documented as far back as 1835 (see Alexis De Toqueville's Democracy In America), but that doesn't absolve us of having to deal with it. Electoral politics is, today, simply a small part of a larger, permanent program to advance special interests. My (and yours) vote doesn't matter much any more because we're not a revenue item, we're an expense. Yes, the President gets to nominate the Supreme Court judges - a serious concern, given how much of our common law is really made by one swing vote on that bench - and he gets to start wars. But if you wonder why Mr Yes We Can failed to reign in the financial industry that dragged the US (and a large chunk of the world) into an enormous recession - it's not because he's spineless, or a Democrat.
If you vote because you think you're a responsible citizen, your heart may be in the right place, but your hands aren't. Study Washington (there are dozens of sites, dozens of books), and consider that to truly influence politics today, we'll have to figure out how to develop a counter-weight to well-organized special interests. And perhaps vote on Nov 5. If you feel like a walk.
Tl;dr: my vote doesn't matter (and if you're reading this and are eligible to vote, neither does yours), and I don't like being used in a shill.
Afa as the shill, that means I would vote even if my vote only had a symbolic value, but only if the game was fair. It's not.
Details break down as follows.
1. I object to the electoral college. The president is essentially elected by 1 - 2M lower middle class people living in 6 - 8 states, neither of which is California. Given this campaign's spending, each of these people's votes is worth $1-2K. Mine is worth $0, or sufficiently close. Thank you, and fuck you.
2. I object to the US two-party system on the grounds that it doesn't represent me as a theoretical sample voter (as physical Alex Zuzin, I don't find that being represented by a political party is a major concern). For example, I'm pro-reproductive rights, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun rights, pro-financial controls, pro-legal drugs, pro-legal prostitution, pro-lower drinking age, pro-publicly funded healthcare, pro-social safety net, pro-strict separation of church and state, pro-right-to-die. Additionally, I'm
- smart enough to realize that taxes will rise no matter what anyone says (which both parties readily admit off the record)
- ditto that healthcare in this country will have to be nationalized for simple demographic reasons
- militantly libertarian vis-a-vis the First and Fourth amendments
3. I also object to the US two-party system on the basis of it generally being bad for this country. I'm aware that a 3+ party system has its own significant drawbacks, starting with Condorcet's Paradox, which tends to leave the majority winners beholden to the minority swing vote. But I'm not claiming a third party would be of political benefit - rather, a cultural one. Two-prong systems polarize. In the US, in the climate of anti-intellectualism, overt religiosity and the cult of Americana, you get a perfect storm, or in the immortal words of Paul Newman, "failure to communicate" (c).
4. Finally, I object - and this goes to the core of my reticence - to what the US liberal democracy has become: a vanity fair of special interests. It was gonna become this all along, as has been well documented as far back as 1835 (see Alexis De Toqueville's Democracy In America), but that doesn't absolve us of having to deal with it. Electoral politics is, today, simply a small part of a larger, permanent program to advance special interests. My (and yours) vote doesn't matter much any more because we're not a revenue item, we're an expense. Yes, the President gets to nominate the Supreme Court judges - a serious concern, given how much of our common law is really made by one swing vote on that bench - and he gets to start wars. But if you wonder why Mr Yes We Can failed to reign in the financial industry that dragged the US (and a large chunk of the world) into an enormous recession - it's not because he's spineless, or a Democrat.
If you vote because you think you're a responsible citizen, your heart may be in the right place, but your hands aren't. Study Washington (there are dozens of sites, dozens of books), and consider that to truly influence politics today, we'll have to figure out how to develop a counter-weight to well-organized special interests. And perhaps vote on Nov 5. If you feel like a walk.