I’ve been hearing a lot lately from dissident circles on the right, an argument about not voting in 2024. Obviously it is still early, but I realized after reading several articles, I am passionate about voting this year, when I really never have been about any election. In previous presidential elections I either didn’t vote, or I voted for some third party candidate: Ross Perot, Ralph Nader. I voted for Mr effing Potato Head in 2012, who would absolutely have made a better president than Obam-butt or Rom-nutz. In 2016 I voted for Bernie after the Dem party manipulated the nomination process to shut him out. I was not ever going to vote for Hillary, and Trump was not the savior populists thought he would be, either. I didn’t actually think anyone the last 30 years would make a good president, everything was more like a protest vote. Though I did vote for Trump in 2020.
Lately though I have found the arguments about not voting to be unconvincing and otherwise a little distressing.
The left is convinced Trump is Hitler x’s Putin x’s every tyrant that ever existed, he is going to institute a New Reich, round up liberals and sodomize them or whatever. Ninety five percent of the threat exists nowhere but in the fever dreams of liberals, as they act out their worst fears by perpetrating them on their perceived enemies. Projecting, in other words, becoming the monster they claim to be pointing at. It is quite insane, this TDS mental illness, and there seems no outer limit to the depravity of it. Once you have embraced the idea that men can become women and colonize women’s venues, mutilating and sterilizing children is therapy, flooding the nation with millions of military-aged males from despotic countries is humane, censoring speech and stealing elections or even assassinating the political opposition, figuratively or literally, is as nothing, and potentially only the beginning, if you are familiar at all with the sort of future the WEF/UN/WHO has in mind. Do you really want to know what a veto proof liberal/progressive/woke federal government, like we now have in California and Minnesota where I live, will be capable of?
Anyway, I can’t really fathom any viable argument, not voting against censorship, one-world centralized tyranny, forced mRNA jabs and lockdowns, mutilating and sterilizing children, the sexualization of grade school children and otherwise being balse’ about child sex trafficking. I’m also working on a piece about the history of child sacrifice and empire (I know, oh joy) and we can certainly have an extended conversation about who is on the side of morality.
Here are a few arguments I have seen, about why you shouldn’t vote, and my response.
my one vote doesn’t really matter, no one vote can make a difference in a presidential election.
The more people you convince of that, the more in fact your vote does not matter, including the vote of those you convince not to vote. This is not unlike arguing we don’t have any power over those who rule us, when we outnumber them like 100,000 to one. One man is not going to overthrow this government, but 80-85 million voting for one man might, as long as 80-85mil think their vote matters. The corollary of telling people one vote doesn’t matter, is telling people their one vote really matters, which is a categorical difference at scale in any election.
nothing really changes no matter who you vote for.
Obviously that has been true, most of my life. The trajectory of the hollowing out of America mentally, physically and spiritually did not change no matter which party has been in power, since the 70’s at least. But then, had Trump actually been able to just be Trump, instead of being undermined even by many a shitbird in his own party, in cahoots with “the swamp” deep managerial State, real change might have been had. He was the first president in maybe the entirety of the history of America who did not get us into a major war. That is really, actually something. Black and Hispanic working class people made real tangible economic and social gains. How much has changed since Biden was installed? Trans, runaway inflation, DEI/ESG madness, the total and complete demonization of MAGA aka anyone who disagrees with liberals, the censorship industrial complex, WWIII? That election had very REAL consequences and everything seemed to change.
Voting legitimizes a toxic, immoral system
If you are saying democracy is a toxic, immoral system, I would defer to a paraphrase of something John Michael Greer has said more than a few times, it is the worst political system except for all the others. Never mind this nation was organized as a Republic, or a collection of sovereign individuals and sovereign states. As that is the case, who do we have to blame for a toxic, immoral system? Democracy is probably moral to the precise degree it’s people are moral. Democracy and a Republic are dependent on participants of good character and integrity. Democracy is participation, which is much more than merely voting. If democracy has failed it is mostly because most people have failed democracy, we no longer participate except by voting, and we hardly even participate then, not informing ourselves about the vote, or thinking or doing much about it after. Local elections matter. Something like 100 million Americans who could vote don’t vote, in any given national election.
Participating in the political process is a public way to enable the crimes and injustices of government. It is explicitly giving your consent to all of its actions in breaking things and killing people.1
No, actually, it is not. Voting for Trump to put the breaks on the liberal project to break everything is not giving Trump consent to do the dumbass, shady things he is guaranteed to do. In fact, real democracy would require me to call out the dumbass, shady things he is guaranteed to do, especially if I vote for him. Government is going to commit crimes and kill people, as a citizen you aren’t absolved from that if you don’t vote. As citizens, and I know this is not a popular opinion, it is our duty to stand against government crimes regardless who controls it. That is, if you want to live in a system relatively free of crime and corruption. Voting, in this late stage empire in decline, is perhaps at best an attempt to facilitate the least damage. That is better than not being able to vote at all, for the least damaging option.
I don’t like the idea of picking my overlord2
Would you rather not have the option to pick your overlord? If we are to have overlords, I would rather I had a choice. Probably I am going to pick the overlord who at least lets me say don’t act like a tyrant. Somebody has to lead, even in a libertarian or anarchist system. You are going to want to have a choice or that leader is guaranteed to be a monster.
I don’t like the idea of picking anyone’s overlord. 3
Do you want other people choosing your overlord for you? Maybe your discernment is such you should be choosing for people who don’t have a clue or are mistaken? Maybe the moral position is to use your discernment to choose for those 180 mil Americans who don’t or can’t vote?
Voting legitimizes a system that is not consensual. 4
No system of any kind has even or ever will be consensual for everybody. There is no utopia that has ever existed or will exist that would be consensual for everybody. This America not being particularly consensual does not negate voting for the better of two bad, not particularly good options. Nor does voting or not voting negate you from advocating for, building or fighting for a more consensual option if you think that is important. Voting is at least a potential tool for creating that.
Democracy is cruel5
Tell that to the 100 million people or more who are actively trying to come to America. I guarantee there is not a less cruel country they are leaving. Not very many people have ever emigrated to America and then returned because they thought America was too cruel. Quite the opposite, usually. America might not be the paradise they thought it would be, but for the vast majority it is vastly preferable to whatever they left.
“government is force.” Every law that government passes is enforced by violence or the threat of violence. Voting justifies that violence.6
Order is enforced by the threat of violence, always. You and I and probably most of the people you know are still alive because there is the threat that if someone does violence to you, a violence will be perpetrated on them such as being locked in a cage for a long time, with very violent men. Take away the fear of violent reprisal and most of us become prey - real talk. If all government disappeared tomorrow, who would protect you from people who are prone to violence? In the absence of the threat of violence violence increases until some threat of greater violence brings order again. That is the failure of most utopian systems, they don’t account for the necessity of violence, acting like everyone will be peaceful when the utopia arrives. How much violence is going to be required to get us to that utopia?
Voting is about what sort of violence you think is most appropriate to deal with whatever threat. Not voting is only going to make you more prey to the sort of violence you don’t think is appropriate.
I personally think 95% of government is not necessary, but that 5% that is necessary is the threat of violence to maintain order.
Voting is for keeping the plebs occupied. At best it debases us. 7
No debate, voting in America has become about bread and circuses. Oswald Spengler pointed out, the primary flaw with democracy is, the people figure out eventually they can vote for politicians who will give them things, until the whole arrangement becomes an epic graft - see the 34+ Trillion dollar national debt - the nation is bankrupted, morally, ethically and financially, and a small coterie of elite take over everything. There is nothing about this next election that is going to change that in any meaningful way. That said, I have never felt debased by voting. Even when I didn’t take it very seriously, I have always appreciated that I have the option.
Conclusion
I wrote this because a lot of writers on substack I admire are advocating for not voting. There seems some kind of consensus building that this is the moral stance. I don’t agree, but I get it. The GAE empire is doomed, there is no recovery for empire America, there is only mitigating the fallout.
The only real answer to that I think, is building parallel systems. A fair number of people have been talking too about going off-grid. I usually point out, the best is to stay on-grid while building the infrastructure for off-grid, doing everything possible off-grid, so when the grid goes down and everybody else is freaking out, your transition is mostly seamless. That is best if there are communities of such people, well prepared. That is a good metaphor for parallel systems.
This election is unique, I believe. 2020 brought not just covid authoritarianism, but a gamed election, a federal set-up in J6, DEI takeover of Institutions, the flowering of the woke revolution, the transing of everything, men taking over women’s sports, a immense expansion in the sacrificing of children to the liberal god of Progress (Moloch), an invasion of military aged men at the borders, the industrial censorship complex, WEF/UN/WHO expanding tyranny, WWIII. If Trump is nothing else, he is a potential vehicle for putting something like the breaks on that. That is liberalism destroying America and Western civilization, deconstructing it unto total chaos, it probably can’t be stopped. But the ruling elite are brittle, their rule is more tenuous than it looks, Trump may be the means by which we begin a process of mitigating the worst of that decline. At the very least, a vote for Trump and Republicans is a vote against the trend toward total managerial state tyranny and liberal embrace of the total deconstruction of everything meaningful.
Maybe I’m wrong about that, I will own it if I am. I know as well as anyone, Trump and the Republican party are not going to save the empire.
That said, that’s my initial, basic argument why you should vote in the 2024 election. Let me know what you think.
See the Christopher Cook post
See the Christopher Cook post
See the Christopher Cook Post
Morazan model
Vote for mr operation warpspeed, not apologising for the terrible scamdemic response, still thinks his quakcine is great, the man who very proudly attended most WEF meeting and so on. He is also establishment but sells you the story he is not.
Both sides can have well-reasoned arguments. The regular person faces the horns of a dilemma: vote, you lose; abstain, you lose.