It’s Red They Win, Blue You Lose (voting is a sucker’s game)

When the system makes winning impossible, it becomes foolish to play the game. This may sound like an excuse for quitting to many, but it is not. It may sound like nihilism to those who dare not stare directly at the truth, but they are wrong. It is starting over. It is letting go of what does not work in order to try something else. It is abandoning illusion in order to find the truth. It is leaving the comfort that conformity and obedience provide in order to find some solid ground on which to make a stand.

 People wedded to a dysfunctional system will accuse you of refusing to use the impotent instruments of change provided to you by those who would be your masters. In truth, you are coming to the realization that it is time to take charge.

I look at what others point to as a collection of victories and all I see does not amount to a pile of crumbs. Those who are swayed by such scraps are like gambling addicts, remembering every time they left the casino up for the night while ignoring their impending bankruptcy. They are blinded by the blinking lights of the machine that robs them. One more pull of the lever and everything will all be right. One more pull of the lever and all will be right. One more pull…

 This is not cowardice to refuse to go along, it is courage. It is not resignation, it is determination. Determination to take the reins of power from those who shake the nuclear dice. To take the microphone from the propagandists and paid spokespersons and speak the truth and not the party line.

 It is the unavoidable acceptance of facts, knowing that to think otherwise is to engage in self-deception and the abandonment of our responsibilities.

I assure you that once freed from the box they do all their power to keep you in, you will laugh at the idea that you once considered voting for Trump or Harris. You will howl with laughter thinking of how you once put your faith in those who already failed you so many times. That you gave your power to those least qualified to wield it responsibly.

 You will one day look upon such behavior as you now look upon the games you once played as a child. You will one day cringe at the decisions you make now as you cringe at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of your adolescence, grateful that you have survived it. Knowing that it was mere luck that you made it through those days before you realized just how precious life really is. And you will ask yourself “What the hell was I thinking?” And you won’t be able to answer, because you will no longer recognize the foolish person you are now. And you will gaze upon those people you once looked up to and realize just how badly they betrayed you, and what a fool you were to let them get away with it.

There will come a time when you will grow disgusted with playing children’s games, in being led by children. In playing grown up instead of acting like a grown up. There will come a time when you realize it is not a game, and even if it was, no one else has the right to write the rules for you. On that day you will feel good, even with the burden of responsibility resting firmly on your shoulders.

 The story of our time is being written by idiots. By psychopaths drunk with power and terrified of all they cannot dominate. By the morally bankrupt and by emotionally crippled children. Their narrative weaves the thinnest of veils so that you see only half of their evil mixed with illusory good. Their illusions and puppetry can only ever deceive those who wish to be deceived. Those with a critical and honest eye will pierce the wispy thin veil, and an illusion once pierced can never again be mistaken for reality.

 This will be your future. You will be made to see the truth for what it is, whether you desire it or not. Your only choice is whether to gaze upon it as a helpless child or as a grown up ready to act upon what can no longer be denied.

 

The Monkey In The Mirror

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation And Empire, a genetic freak known only as The Mule seems to arise from out of nowhere and manages to take control over the better part of the galaxy. Similarly, a man who I’ll refer to as The Monkey has managed in the last year to capture the Republican nomination for President despite having been dismissed by the prognosticators of the media. Whether he too is a genetic freak is an issue I shall leave to others to decide.

But like The Mule, no one seems to be able to account for the trajectory of The Monkey, nobody can explain how someone so seemingly lacking in positive human attributes has been able to have the success he has enjoyed. Everyone has their pet theories as to how The Monkey has managed to achieve the nearly impossible while breaking all the rules, but none of the explanations seem convincing. More often when people attempt to exposit a theory it is merely a matter of finger pointing.

In Foundation And Empire, it turns out The Mule has the ability to control the minds of others, and perhaps that might help explain The Monkey. Somehow when The Monkey’s minions look at him they don’t see the obnoxious, hateful, bloviating simian, they see what The Monkey wants them to see. Well, actually, even his minions have to admit that he’s an unlikeable character, and yet they are able to see past the gruff exterior to the warm, caring individual that the rest of society does not see. Like a lonely woman who wants to feel loved, the supporters of The Monkey ignore all the warnings their friends raise and prefer instead to see the knight in shining armor their hearts cry out for. True love, after all, is a matter of the heart, not the head.

What then accounts for the unprecedented success had by The Monkey? The truth might be quite obvious and yet so unpleasant that we would rather not admit to it. The liberals want to blame the conservatives and the conservatives want to blame the liberals. Indeed, everyone’s pointing their fingers at someone else. But nobody seems to want to take a hard look in the mirror. Maybe The Monkey isn’t some random occurrence or the cause of some other party. Perhaps we, individually and collectively, are to blame for the ascendance of The Monkey. Perhaps we have somehow allowed ourselves to slide down somewhat on the evolutionary family tree.

What would make a narcissistic capitalist monkey popular? Perhaps it is due to the fact that we have been permitting narcissistic capitalist monkeys to tell our stories for us for the last thirty years, beginning around the time of Alex P. Keaton. Perhaps it is because we have been told over and over again if you are good you will become rich and if you are rich you must be smart. Perhaps the values of free market media have finally overtaken the values humanity has lived with up until the time television took over as the voice of authority in every home.

Maybe we have become a nation of narcissistic monkeys ourselves, whose only purpose in life is to get more for ourselves and not worry about the results of our actions. After all, are we not always being urged to satisfy our gluttonous cravings for anything advertisers are selling? Isn’t it our patriotic duty to be selfish and arrogant?

Perhaps the Republican Party is the natural home to the narcissistic capitalist, but the opposition is merely a kinder, gentler, more hypocritical breed of monkey. Those who claim they have been the alternative to the narcissistic capitalists have not been averse to eating from their hands whenever it is outstretched to them. We are all of us living in our own little jungle, not willing to contemplate the larger world outside.

For a couple of generations now, we’ve been living a sort of delusion, a mindset sold to us by advertising executives. It’s a delusion that tells us we don’t have to think hard or grow old. We try to live this lie by doing the only thing that is in our control, refusing to grow up. Growing up means accepting that we as adults have certain societal norms we should live up to and sometimes apologizing for our behavior when we have failed. It means taking responsibility for our own actions. Growing up means grappling with difficult questions and finding solutions. But we have become a society that will no longer admit that we are ever wrong or responsible for anything we’ve done.

The Monkey will never admit wrongdoing. That’s part of the narcissistic package. Or perhaps that’s sociopathy, I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. The point is, we live in a world nowadays where nobody feels responsible for anything and nobody feels like they have to set the good example. Everybody is worried about their rights and nobody about their responsibilities. It’s no wonder why we can convince ourselves that a monkey is worthy of leading our country nowadays. It’s no wonder we can overlook his many and pronounced flaws.

A society of monkeys doesn’t have to worry about the long-term implications of their behavior, after all, we’re just monkeys. To monkeys, the Middle East exists for no other reason than to be a holding tank for the oil that will eventually be consumed by our vehicles. Central America is there as a place for us to vacation or as factory labor to make our clothing.

If we’re monkeys, all we have to do is select an alpha-monkey to subject our will and our decision-making abilities to. Of course, if you know anything about primate behavior, you’ll know there are some rather unpleasant aspects to subjecting yourself to a dominate ape, but being monkeys we really don’t care to speculate on such matters. Monkeys aren’t known for their dignity or self-respect.

We can pretend if we like that The Monkey is an aberration, sprung upon us by random chance. We can believe that we only have to defeat The Monkey in his attempt to win the presidency and disaster will be averted, that we will have confronted and won the important battle of our age. But if The Monkey is not some fluke, if The Monkey is merely a symptom of the monkey within all of us, a symptom of a monkey virus that has been spreading in our society for thirty or more years, then the defeat of one monkey, even if he be the alpha monkey, will do little to change the path we are on.

There is a voice inside us that says we merely have to turn out in November and cast our vote for the lesser of two evils, that everything else we attempt to do is not merely wrong but will end up helping The Monkey. It is a tempting voice, a voice for the status quo. It tells us that we are basically fine and all we have to do is overcome the enemy that sprang from nowhere and can be cast back into the abyss by following the accepted wisdom. This voice speaks to our laziness of thought, our unwillingness to take a hard look at ourselves or the position we now find ourselves in. It speaks to the monkey within us all. But before you decide, take a look at The Monkey, and ask yourself if that is really what you want to be.