The Pointless "Civic Duty" of Choosing Who Will Raise My Taxes And Spend It On Crap
People who have known me - I mean REALLY known me - for a good number of years have expressed shock and surprise in recent years when I point out that voting (with the possible exception of local offices - more on this below) is an utterly meaningless waste of time and resources, emotion, and quite frankly nothing but someone telling me that I need them as a personal savior from "that elected person" in another state who (so the story goes) is going to raise my taxes and give it to an illegal immigrant (or something like that). American voting, the only kind with which I have any firsthand experience, is little more than someone trying to frighten me about what someone else is going to do, so I should go down to my local precinct and vote for this other person who will save me by spending seven figures (or more) to take a job that pays six figures. And then we wonder why these folks don't know basic economics. I have basically taken (and practice) abstinence in regards to voting because it's nothing but a shell game where two different piles of crap are shuffled around every two years on the basis of who can get the most brain dead persons incapable of getting out of jury duty to give them a chance to screw things up even worse.
Once again on the first Tuesday after a Monday in November, we will be treated to the spectacle of a bunch of stuffed shirts spending more money to obtain the office than they'll ever make in it promising to protect us from So and So who lives elsewhere. If you're a Democrat, they're gonna promise to protect you from Trump, if you're a Republican, they'll protect you from Nancy Pelosi and George Soros.
A PERSONAL STORY
The first time I voted, not that it's important in the bigger picture, was in the 1980 Presidential election held at my school. Obviously, this was not an official election, but it was an attempt by the school to encourage us to engage in civic responsibility. Reagan won in a landslide, and the first lesson I learned (wrongly) was that my school was microcosm of the world as Reagan did the same that evening. In 1984, our Biology class voted via secret ballot and Reagan beat Mondale, 17-4. You know, about the same way he did that night when Mondale carried only his home state by the votes of about 3,000 dead residents of a northern Minnesota cemetery. And then 1988 rolled around, and I voted via absentee ballot on Halloween just a few days after my 19th birthday. As it turned out it was the first, last, and ONLY time in my life I'd ever vote "for" someone for President.
I voted for George Bush, who would later have to add two middle initials when being described to distinguish himself from his elected son, a bona fide member of the Lucky Sperm club. For all of the nonsense uttered about that election since - mostly the "wasn't a big deal until later" Willie Horton issue - the single most memorable words of the campaign were six words Bush uttered in Clint Eastwood style: "Read my lips: no new taxes." Now just to be clear - as a 19-year old, I didn't believe this for even a moment. What I and most other Americans who voted for Bush believed was more a case of, "Both of them are going to raise taxes, but Bush isn't going to raise them nearly as high as Dukakis would." The bigger issue for me as the Cold War was winding down is - in my view anyway - the one that should determine your vote: whom do you want to be as Commander-in-Chief of the military? If I may oversimplify, Congress tends to run the domestic policy while a President is there mostly because we need a single person to make the right decision regarding war and peace (hopefully for peace). I trusted Bush, the war hero pilot, more than I did Dukakis, the two-year Army veteran from the Eisenhower era.
After the most stellar job of diplomacy in my lifetime - Bush's successful Operation Desert Storm - he oversaw the crash of the USA economy, and a number of Baby Boomers filed their first bankruptcies. And then came a litany of mostly unqualified idiots whose lying made Bush's breaking of his "no new taxes" promise seem tame by comparison. First in line were a pair of Ivy League educated snobs joined together at the ambition who kept bobbing back to the surface of the national esophagus like bile from a rather nasty burp, Bill and Hillary Clinton. His wife, who it was obvious from the first time I saw her on the "60 Minutes" interview after Super Bowl XXVI was lusting for power as badly as her old man did for hot young girls half his age, came right out with the same offer she'd made a big deal about in Arkansas, "two for the price of one." The American electorate didn't take too kindly to this, however, so she mostly kept her mouth shut until his election was secured.
Why do I hate the Clintons? Mostly because prior to Trump they were the biggest two-faced liars I've ever seen in my life. Bill attacked Paul Tsongas for a proposed ten cents a gallon gas tax, saying he was opposed to a gas tax. He lied. His first budget had a 4.3 cent gas tax increase. Bill promised to lower middle class taxes. He lied. He raised them. Bill promised he was going to let Haitians come to this country and escape the oppression of that country. He even accused Bush of playing "racial politics" with those uh not white people in Haiti. But when 400 of them put together a housetop as a boat and drowned trying to sail to the USA, Clinton then got on the radio in Haiti and begged them not to do it. In other words, he lied again. When he lied under oath about what he'd done with Miss Lewinsky, he was doing the only thing he knew how to do. His wife, a bona fide member of those who get "MRS degrees", was as bad as he was, claiming that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, a truly amazing feat given that nobody had heard of him until she was six years old.
So I voted and got stuck with Clinton for two terms. Had he done what he promised - cut my taxes and increased my health care coverage - then it could be said my choice was wrong. But he didn't. Bush lied to me about taxes, and so did Clinton. But then we went "full retard" with lies when George W. Bush, former owner of the Texas Rangers and colossally failed businessman, used the horrors of the 9/11 attacks to start a second war in Iraq just for the hell of it. At least when his Daddy lied, nobody died. I wound up stuck voting against Gore, the Clintonian choice, and then against Kerry because he went the entire election without ever telling me what he planned to do about anything. The guy never spelled out a single specific on any issue for the simple reason that if he had, he would have lost by much more than he did.
And then came "the Chosen One," Senator Barack Obama by way of Chicago, Hawaii and - in the birther nonsense - Kenya. He proceeded to lie about his intentions with health care and then pass a law so great that he couldn't start it until well after he was re-elected and - possum on a gumbush - those premiums bolted skyward for folks who were just catching wise to this nonsense less than a month before the 2016 election. I voted in both elections for some nutbag name down the ballot, hoping desperately Sweet Meteor O' Death would take me out. I never hated Obama like I did the Clintons but then again I never hated O.J. Simpson as badly as those two, either. (That's an obvious exaggeration, but you get my point). Hillary - she of the "let's pretend my being married to the President makes me qualified to be Senator from a state where I've never lived" pedigree - was obviously running for President since 1992 (or planning it anyway). After biding her time in the Obama administration, she packed it in for four years and then basically began a coronation disguised as an election against Waldorf the Muppet, Bernie Sanders. The day I'd feared for nearly 25 years was at hand, but fortunately the Republican Party was going to save the day by nominating a charismatic candidate, a fresh-faced and vibrant youngster, maybe not completely white for a change, a dynamic and daring guy right out of central casting. What I got instead was the drunk jackass frequenting Archie Bunker's bar with his bad toupee and telling all those stories about what a street tough he'd been in his youth.
THIS was the solution to beat the Hildabeast?
It's over, quite frankly. Any country who would nominate the two candidates we got in 2016 deserves to be flushed down the Porta-Don. Trump told me he was going to replace Obamacare. He lied. He told me he was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He lied (and quite frankly, people with one active brain cell - or at least Google Earth - knew this wasn't going to happen the moment he said it). I could go on and on but this guy's "truth" has more stretch than, well, I better not use that example.
Five Presidents during my voting years and every single one of them a pathetic liar, every single one of them the political equivalent of a guy on the prowl who will literally say or do anything just to have sex. In 2016, I did something I had not done since I was old enough to vote: I sat out the election and basically said, "This country deserves what it gets." Abstaining from voting - e.g. NOT voting - is not only a whole lot easier, it's actually the exact same thing as voting is: an utterly meaningless exercise to pick which liar you want to reward with a plum job.
Now before I take on a few of the common objections, a related subject. I'm more inclined to advocate the voting at the local level as at least being somewhat based in reality. Let's face it: Democrats who want to bypass the system and become President are going to go run for New York Senator (as Bobby Kennedy and Hillary did), they are not going to move to a mid-sized Midwestern town and run for mayor. Local mayors and the local officeholders TEND (yes, there are exceptions) to be people who are from the area and grew up there. They bring the bonus of knowing the area, the needs of the area, and even the people who can make a difference locally and improve the community. The late Speaker Tip O'Neill was fond of saying, "All politics is local," and I'm of the firmest belief that problems need to be solved at the closest possible level. The states and the feds ensure that never happens (all that control they love), but this is the reality. So voting for local leaders, judges, etc is a good practice but with a caveat: you have to actually KNOW something about them. And the simple fact is that most voters are nothing but mindless tribalists who see what party name is next to someone in a race they don't know and ignorantly cast a vote for that person. That said individual may be a convicted sex offender matters not. (This is part of why after finding out one of the candidates in a local 1990 race had been busted for dealing dope, I made a vow to never again vote for a candidate on the ballot that I didn't know the local issue).
What's funny is how many people get mad, even enraged when I point out the utter uselessness and waste of time of the act. Hey, I don't judge you. I voted in all but one election from 1988 to 2014, and the one I failed to vote in was because they sent the absentee ballot to my house, and it got covered up and tossed.
But you simply can't tell me it ever made a substantive difference.
I voted for Bush, who said he wasn't raising my taxes - and then he did.
I voted against Clinton twice, but he promised he was cutting my taxes and giving me health care that "can never be taken away" - but he didn't.
I voted for the second Bush, who promised me he would never engage in "nation building" and proceeded to tell perhaps the most expensive lie in American history by doing that very thing in Iraq.
I then voted against Obama twice, who promised me I could keep my doctor with his health care plan - and yet he lied.
And do I even need to list Trump's insane list of nose-growing fabrications?
In short, nothing I ever actually voted "for" ever happened. Ever. At what point does the law of futility kick in?
So let's deal with the common objections one by one.
1) If you don't vote, you have no right to complain.
I first heard this nonsensical cliche the morning after the 1988 election when one of my college professor's asked everyone who voted to raise their hands and then told the rest of the class they had no right to complain for four years. That made no sense to me then, but it makes even less sense now.
If I'm in charge of hiring at a company, and I hire an incompetent fool that bankrupts my company, I AM RESPONSIBLE! Not the guy who didn't have anything to do with it. And yet our federal elections are nothing but hiring someone to do a job and get paid six figures for it, often after spending seven figures to obtain it (or more). If YOU vote for some sorry candidate who screws things up then YOU are directly responsible, not I. It is not MY job to "cancel your vote" by voting for (perhaps) an equally unqualified bozo. The reality is this: IF you vote, YOU have no right to complain.
2) The political parties have taken the process hostage to the point it's meaningless.
Okay, so let's say you didn't vote for the current President as, in fact over one-half of all voters did not in 2016. You're not absolved if you voted for Hillary, either, because the parties have so short-circuited this process as to make it meaningless. The Democrats, since 1984, have a concept called "super delegates." Super delegates are there - let me be blunt - to make sure you pick the candidate THEY want you to pick. It's sort of like when you go to classification while joining the military, and they have you pick out what they want you to do for the next 2-6 years of your life. And 2016 is a fantastic example.
Yes, Hillary Clinton got the most votes in the Democratic primaries. But here's the catch: if you switch the vote totals for Hillary and Bernie Sanders, she STILL gets the nomination! Why? Super delegates. Indeed, this was the first race I can ever recall where in a large scale fashion super delegates - who are supposed to keep their options open until the Convention - were prominently out front to make sure that when she and Sanders tied in Iowa (and he then routed her in New Hampshire) that the point was communicated that she had "really" won because she'd won the "real" contest. The media coverage was so dictated. Furthermore, more than one Democrat would argue that "Bernie isn't even really a Democrat," which was hilarious when you remember he's been a more reliable vote for the party than Hillary Clinton ever was. So the Democrats put on a charade of a contest, picked the candidate they wanted from day one, and they called it "people participating in democracy." It was no more democracy than Communist Russia was, it was just presented that way. "But Hillary got the most votes" I've heard a hundred times. But it wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't.
The Republicans, irony of ironies, actually let their process work in 2016 and got stuck with the most bizarre result in American history. Donald Trump simply watched Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio split the same voters among themselves and waltzed his way to a nomination. The GOP knew deep down that he was an uncontrollable disaster waiting to happen, but the Republicans had spent a good 15 years mouthing conservative rhetoric while sending deficits through the ceiling, all while using the excuse "but the Democrats would have been worse." So they weren't exactly popular with their base, and the result was a TV star who was - can you believe it - the most LIBERAL Republican elected since Teddy Roosevelt.
But he sure talked tough and for some folks that was enough.
The two parties have hamstrung the process, and if you don't believe me just go ask George Wallace, John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader how "easy" it is to get on the ballot. Okay, you'd need a seance to solicit Wallace's view, but you get the point.
3) The dirty little secret is this: your taxes are going to go up, and the spending is going to go up no matter who wins the election.
It amuses me that Republicans even try this one anymore. Let me point out a truth that David Stockman, a former Congresscritter from Michigan and Reagan's OMB director, learned and touted for public consumption in "The Triumph of Politics" - nearly 90% of the federal budget CANNOT be cut. It is either protected by law or so politically fatal (e.g. Social Security) that no politician can cut it no matter how hard he (or she) tries. And because costs go up every single year, every single election is a vote for a tax increase somewhere. Unless...
4) Despite what you've been told, your grandchildren aren't paying the national debt.
Every time I hear a politician say something about "the debt we're leaving our children and grand children", I want to laugh. In my lifetime, the debt has gone only ONE direction in any meaningful way. We were one trillion dollars in debt when I first heard about it. We are now $21.6 trillion in debt meaning none of the politicians who told me their fears about this ever did a damned thing about it. Of course, the reality is that anyone who paid attention in Economics class knows that you cannot apply the standards of personal debt to the national debt for several reasons, not the least being that the national debt in some cases benefits people (unlike credit card, which benefits the banks).
5) A reminder that you're not voting your hopes, you're voting your fears.
Every election I can remember has featured the slogan, "The Lesser of Two Evils." And in all honesty, every single election save the first one (1988), I've never once voted FOR the candidate, I've voted against the one I feared more. And the reality - unless you're "really" into politics as a real-life version of football - is that most folks do the same thing.
I didn't vote for Bush in 1992 because I wanted four more years of his tax increases; I voted for him because I didn't trust Bill Clinton's promised free lunch health care. I didn't vote for Bush Jr in 2000 because of his proposal to put Social Security in the stock market, I voted out of fear that Gore making Supreme Court appointments would wind up legislating radical leftist morality under the religion of environmentalism. I didn't vote for McCain in 2008 because he was a 72-year old man who had just picked a thoroughly unqualified potential Commander-in-Chief, and I didn't vote for Obama because I feared his health care plan if passed would raise my taxes and premiums as, in fact, it did.
Or I'm told that Candidate C "favors killing babies," as if that one candidate can stop abortion. Or inversely I'm told Candidate R "isn't protecting our kids from school shootings" as if that candidate had anything to do with it or if that candidate could have stopped it. And Candidate K is a racist based on something he said 40 years ago even though I'm not supposed to hold what Candidate L did at the same age against her.
The reality is that voting thus becomes a purely "negative" practice. I vote Democrat because I fear Trump, or I vote Republican because I fear Nancy Pelosi.
6) Some people have WAY TOO MUCH invested in the so-called outcomes.
I have seen people come absolutely unglued when a particular candidate won. I've seen people get depressed for months and talk about nothing else except how much they "hate" President So And So. And then I'll watch them justify it with irrational arguments. On the flip side, I've seen folks act about like I did in high school when Alabama won the previous Saturday, somehow thinking the winning candidate is a personal vindication of sorts for them - their ideology, their "way of life," their personal beliefs/opinions, or even themselves. Quite frankly, if you let who holds office determine how you feel, you're a pretty shallow person in the first place who probably needs hobbies beyond politics anyway.
Much has been made in the last two years of people who are "with Trump no matter what." Some of these people frighten me, but then again, so the people who think "Trump is wrong no matter what." These kinds of irrational thoughts border on cultic non-thinking. It's one thing to think in a national crisis, "Man, I'm glad Candidate X is making the decisions rather than Candidate Whom X Beat." It's quite another to beholden your allegiance to any leader or politician to the point your own personality is subsumed to his (or her) politics. Yes, there are a lot of people who contort themselves into unrecognizable positions because they're "with Trump." But guess what? Those very same types of people were here during Obama's Presidency, too, you just weren't paying close enough attention. In fact, every single President has a swath of the electorate that seems to be under his spell, and if you don't believe me just try to say something negative - ANYTHING negative - about Ronald Reagan at any Republican gathering. Say that Reagan ran up the deficit, you get told "but the Democrats owned Congress." Say that Reagan blew it in Lebanon and got some Marines killed in an ill-defined mission, you get told "but there was no way to know that would happen because that was a new kind of warfare." Point out that Reagan - honestly, might I add - suggested he would appoint judges that would overturn Roe v Wade but appointed two who would not, you get told "but the Democrats blocked Bork." There is literally nothing some folks cannot turn into an argument to blame the opposition.
And this same fact holds true for Obama, Bush, or Clinton. I'm told repeatedly that Clinton ran a surplus, but when I point out he didn't have a surplus until Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott enforced his own 1993 budget deal on him (which he fought after agreeing to it), they switch subjects to the economy. Point out the "Bush recession" ended in March 1991 while Clinton didn't even bother to announce his candidacy until October and didn't take office until January 1993, and they work their way back to the surplus.
These are folks who voted for someone and desire validation for their choice. When you don't make a choice, you simply don't have this problem.
7) Make your voice heard
I'm not sure which cliche' is the worst, but this one is highly competitive. If the one about not complaining is Alabama then this one is surely Clemson. Your senator or representative in Washington - regardless of party, regardless of ideology - doesn't give a rat's behind about you. Believe it or not, that person is not thinking about you when casting a vote, when sitting in a meeting about an important issue the government is preparing to screw up, or before laying down with the mistress to catch a little Jimmy Fallon before going home to the wife.
Let me show you how this works, and while I'll use Pelosi, you can fill in with any Republican leader's name as well.
Pelosi: "We need your vote on this bill to bankrupt the United States and make us the permanent slave of Russia."
Congresscritter: "I can't do that, my constituency is against it by a 4 to 1 margin."
Pelosi: "Fine, you'll either vote with us and hope they forget it or you'll lose that committee you're chairing on curing cancer. Let us know your decision by one today."
At which point the Congresscritter's only choices are vote for it, lose the only power they have, or resign and lose the only power they have.
They don't hear YOUR voice, they hear the voice of the party leader telling them "get on board or you're going overboard."
8) The Presidential candidates are thoroughly unqualified.
The movement of the parties to popular vote primaries combined with television has led to a litany of thoroughly unqualified candidates that run for President despite having nothing that commends them for the job. If the party is dumb enough to nominate them, I have to live with that decision.
The last thoroughly qualified person to run and win was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Every President since then (and most of the nominees) have been "qualified" only by the bare Constitutional standard and with nothing to commend them for the job. Bill Clinton may have been governor of Arkansas for 12 years, but most governors are not even as powerful in their states as the Lt Governor is (New Jersey is a notable exception). He'd avoided military service at all costs, he had a morally bankrupt personal life that was just begging for him to be the willing sycophant of a foreign government, and his entire life had been one public sector job after another. George W Bush was the Hillary Clinton of the Republican Party, a person who was only even considered for President because of his last name. Even his military service was somewhat questionable (and certainly had a gap in it that was never fully explained), and he'd failed five businesses. When he exploded the budget deficit, he was merely acting on what he'd learned in business. Barack Obama had a whopping 143 days in the Senate (in actual service there) and was a great speaker. In terms of Senate seniority he was at the back of the line - and yet he moved right to the front with his soaring oratory about us healing our land and other empty-headed mantras from the Left Wing Temple of Doom.
9) If you lived somewhere without the right to vote....
"But if you didn't have the right to vote" is yet another hypothetical that doesn't apply. For starters, what is the proposed circumstance? Did I once have the right but someone took it away or did I never have it in the first place? The latter will hardly elicit much outrage since you can't really miss something you never had. The former is a better argument except for this: millions of people with the right to vote are going into ballot boxes and punching holes (or whatever) and doing everything right only to have a machine decide their vote doesn't count because it didn't read the dimpled or hanging chad (or whatever).
Having the "right to vote" isn't the same thing as my vote actually counting. It's sort of like having health care insurance isn't the same as having health care access, not that you can explain this to clowns in DC.
10) But if you're drawing money from the government, the type of people in charge could affect you
That's true, and it's why the military vote leans Republican. The problem is that this has already happened. Several years ago, we veterans who draw VA compensation experienced the Democrats' shell game firsthand. First, they suspended our COLAs for two years. In one of those years, they deducted the $250 stimulus we received from our VA pay - and then taxed it. Now, I'm one of the fortunate ones, and I'm not complaining, I'm only making the point: I've experienced this firsthand and so has every other person who has ever drawn a military retirement or VA compensation.
Oh, and the VA hospitals have been a disaster for at least forty years or more through multiple administrations of both parties.
Voting hasn't made any of that any better. Remind me again about what a patriotic thing this is?
11) But people died for your right to vote
Actually, they died for my freedom to choose whether or not to vote.....if you're going to use that argument.
12) The Political Parties ensure recycled crap in government
Sure enough, every so often someone comes along running for President and insists that "change" (never defined but usually all I have left after the tax increases) is coming if you elect that person. So in 1980, Ronald Reagan comes along and tells us it's time for a change. He wins a colossal landslide and what does he do?
a) he picks the previous two Republicans Presidents's chief of staff as Secretary of State
b) he chooses a Secretary of Defense who held several positions in the previous Republican administration (Nixon)
c) he very nearly chooses the last Republican President (Ford) as his running mate
d) he replaces the first Secretary of State with Nixon's former secretary of both Labor and Treasury
e) he appoints the former Solicitor General under Nixon to the Supreme Court, but the nomination is scuttled
f) he wants another Nixon former Treasury secretary for his Cabinet, but he gets turned down
So Reagan is followed by Bush, who leaves a few of Reagan's late term choices on in his own Cabinet. In 1992, Bill Clinton gets elected promising change. He wins a plurality vote and an Electoral College landslide, and what does he do?
a) he picks a former officeholder in the Johnson and Carter administrations for Secretary of State
b) he picks a former Carter administration Director of Policy Planning for his National Security Advisor
c) he picks Carter's "counsel to the President" for the same job
d) he picks a former Nixon/Ford/Reagan speechwriter as "counselor"
His change sounded a lot more like "some now older guys who were in the Carter administration"
So Bush the Younger comes along promising change and what do we get? A bunch of his Daddy's old pals (Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, Mitch Daniels).
It's literally shoveling the same garbage around and calling it something different.
CONCLUSION
In short, voting in the federal and state elections is pretty much a waste of time with no tangible benefit for anyone save the winner. It doesn't matter what they tell you before the election, it only matters what they actually do afterwards. And the litany of liars is simply too much for me to continue the charade that my "voice" or "vote" actually amounts to a hill of beans. The local elections, at least, have the potential to bear some important fruit, but even what can be done there is often controlled by the All Seeing Eye of Big Brother.
Look, if you want to vote, I'm not going to try to stop you nor am I going to judge you for doing so. My problem is that too many people who do vote won't grant me the same courtesy.
Once again on the first Tuesday after a Monday in November, we will be treated to the spectacle of a bunch of stuffed shirts spending more money to obtain the office than they'll ever make in it promising to protect us from So and So who lives elsewhere. If you're a Democrat, they're gonna promise to protect you from Trump, if you're a Republican, they'll protect you from Nancy Pelosi and George Soros.
A PERSONAL STORY
The first time I voted, not that it's important in the bigger picture, was in the 1980 Presidential election held at my school. Obviously, this was not an official election, but it was an attempt by the school to encourage us to engage in civic responsibility. Reagan won in a landslide, and the first lesson I learned (wrongly) was that my school was microcosm of the world as Reagan did the same that evening. In 1984, our Biology class voted via secret ballot and Reagan beat Mondale, 17-4. You know, about the same way he did that night when Mondale carried only his home state by the votes of about 3,000 dead residents of a northern Minnesota cemetery. And then 1988 rolled around, and I voted via absentee ballot on Halloween just a few days after my 19th birthday. As it turned out it was the first, last, and ONLY time in my life I'd ever vote "for" someone for President.
I voted for George Bush, who would later have to add two middle initials when being described to distinguish himself from his elected son, a bona fide member of the Lucky Sperm club. For all of the nonsense uttered about that election since - mostly the "wasn't a big deal until later" Willie Horton issue - the single most memorable words of the campaign were six words Bush uttered in Clint Eastwood style: "Read my lips: no new taxes." Now just to be clear - as a 19-year old, I didn't believe this for even a moment. What I and most other Americans who voted for Bush believed was more a case of, "Both of them are going to raise taxes, but Bush isn't going to raise them nearly as high as Dukakis would." The bigger issue for me as the Cold War was winding down is - in my view anyway - the one that should determine your vote: whom do you want to be as Commander-in-Chief of the military? If I may oversimplify, Congress tends to run the domestic policy while a President is there mostly because we need a single person to make the right decision regarding war and peace (hopefully for peace). I trusted Bush, the war hero pilot, more than I did Dukakis, the two-year Army veteran from the Eisenhower era.
After the most stellar job of diplomacy in my lifetime - Bush's successful Operation Desert Storm - he oversaw the crash of the USA economy, and a number of Baby Boomers filed their first bankruptcies. And then came a litany of mostly unqualified idiots whose lying made Bush's breaking of his "no new taxes" promise seem tame by comparison. First in line were a pair of Ivy League educated snobs joined together at the ambition who kept bobbing back to the surface of the national esophagus like bile from a rather nasty burp, Bill and Hillary Clinton. His wife, who it was obvious from the first time I saw her on the "60 Minutes" interview after Super Bowl XXVI was lusting for power as badly as her old man did for hot young girls half his age, came right out with the same offer she'd made a big deal about in Arkansas, "two for the price of one." The American electorate didn't take too kindly to this, however, so she mostly kept her mouth shut until his election was secured.
Why do I hate the Clintons? Mostly because prior to Trump they were the biggest two-faced liars I've ever seen in my life. Bill attacked Paul Tsongas for a proposed ten cents a gallon gas tax, saying he was opposed to a gas tax. He lied. His first budget had a 4.3 cent gas tax increase. Bill promised to lower middle class taxes. He lied. He raised them. Bill promised he was going to let Haitians come to this country and escape the oppression of that country. He even accused Bush of playing "racial politics" with those uh not white people in Haiti. But when 400 of them put together a housetop as a boat and drowned trying to sail to the USA, Clinton then got on the radio in Haiti and begged them not to do it. In other words, he lied again. When he lied under oath about what he'd done with Miss Lewinsky, he was doing the only thing he knew how to do. His wife, a bona fide member of those who get "MRS degrees", was as bad as he was, claiming that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, a truly amazing feat given that nobody had heard of him until she was six years old.
So I voted and got stuck with Clinton for two terms. Had he done what he promised - cut my taxes and increased my health care coverage - then it could be said my choice was wrong. But he didn't. Bush lied to me about taxes, and so did Clinton. But then we went "full retard" with lies when George W. Bush, former owner of the Texas Rangers and colossally failed businessman, used the horrors of the 9/11 attacks to start a second war in Iraq just for the hell of it. At least when his Daddy lied, nobody died. I wound up stuck voting against Gore, the Clintonian choice, and then against Kerry because he went the entire election without ever telling me what he planned to do about anything. The guy never spelled out a single specific on any issue for the simple reason that if he had, he would have lost by much more than he did.
And then came "the Chosen One," Senator Barack Obama by way of Chicago, Hawaii and - in the birther nonsense - Kenya. He proceeded to lie about his intentions with health care and then pass a law so great that he couldn't start it until well after he was re-elected and - possum on a gumbush - those premiums bolted skyward for folks who were just catching wise to this nonsense less than a month before the 2016 election. I voted in both elections for some nutbag name down the ballot, hoping desperately Sweet Meteor O' Death would take me out. I never hated Obama like I did the Clintons but then again I never hated O.J. Simpson as badly as those two, either. (That's an obvious exaggeration, but you get my point). Hillary - she of the "let's pretend my being married to the President makes me qualified to be Senator from a state where I've never lived" pedigree - was obviously running for President since 1992 (or planning it anyway). After biding her time in the Obama administration, she packed it in for four years and then basically began a coronation disguised as an election against Waldorf the Muppet, Bernie Sanders. The day I'd feared for nearly 25 years was at hand, but fortunately the Republican Party was going to save the day by nominating a charismatic candidate, a fresh-faced and vibrant youngster, maybe not completely white for a change, a dynamic and daring guy right out of central casting. What I got instead was the drunk jackass frequenting Archie Bunker's bar with his bad toupee and telling all those stories about what a street tough he'd been in his youth.
THIS was the solution to beat the Hildabeast?
It's over, quite frankly. Any country who would nominate the two candidates we got in 2016 deserves to be flushed down the Porta-Don. Trump told me he was going to replace Obamacare. He lied. He told me he was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He lied (and quite frankly, people with one active brain cell - or at least Google Earth - knew this wasn't going to happen the moment he said it). I could go on and on but this guy's "truth" has more stretch than, well, I better not use that example.
Five Presidents during my voting years and every single one of them a pathetic liar, every single one of them the political equivalent of a guy on the prowl who will literally say or do anything just to have sex. In 2016, I did something I had not done since I was old enough to vote: I sat out the election and basically said, "This country deserves what it gets." Abstaining from voting - e.g. NOT voting - is not only a whole lot easier, it's actually the exact same thing as voting is: an utterly meaningless exercise to pick which liar you want to reward with a plum job.
Now before I take on a few of the common objections, a related subject. I'm more inclined to advocate the voting at the local level as at least being somewhat based in reality. Let's face it: Democrats who want to bypass the system and become President are going to go run for New York Senator (as Bobby Kennedy and Hillary did), they are not going to move to a mid-sized Midwestern town and run for mayor. Local mayors and the local officeholders TEND (yes, there are exceptions) to be people who are from the area and grew up there. They bring the bonus of knowing the area, the needs of the area, and even the people who can make a difference locally and improve the community. The late Speaker Tip O'Neill was fond of saying, "All politics is local," and I'm of the firmest belief that problems need to be solved at the closest possible level. The states and the feds ensure that never happens (all that control they love), but this is the reality. So voting for local leaders, judges, etc is a good practice but with a caveat: you have to actually KNOW something about them. And the simple fact is that most voters are nothing but mindless tribalists who see what party name is next to someone in a race they don't know and ignorantly cast a vote for that person. That said individual may be a convicted sex offender matters not. (This is part of why after finding out one of the candidates in a local 1990 race had been busted for dealing dope, I made a vow to never again vote for a candidate on the ballot that I didn't know the local issue).
What's funny is how many people get mad, even enraged when I point out the utter uselessness and waste of time of the act. Hey, I don't judge you. I voted in all but one election from 1988 to 2014, and the one I failed to vote in was because they sent the absentee ballot to my house, and it got covered up and tossed.
But you simply can't tell me it ever made a substantive difference.
I voted for Bush, who said he wasn't raising my taxes - and then he did.
I voted against Clinton twice, but he promised he was cutting my taxes and giving me health care that "can never be taken away" - but he didn't.
I voted for the second Bush, who promised me he would never engage in "nation building" and proceeded to tell perhaps the most expensive lie in American history by doing that very thing in Iraq.
I then voted against Obama twice, who promised me I could keep my doctor with his health care plan - and yet he lied.
And do I even need to list Trump's insane list of nose-growing fabrications?
In short, nothing I ever actually voted "for" ever happened. Ever. At what point does the law of futility kick in?
So let's deal with the common objections one by one.
1) If you don't vote, you have no right to complain.
I first heard this nonsensical cliche the morning after the 1988 election when one of my college professor's asked everyone who voted to raise their hands and then told the rest of the class they had no right to complain for four years. That made no sense to me then, but it makes even less sense now.
If I'm in charge of hiring at a company, and I hire an incompetent fool that bankrupts my company, I AM RESPONSIBLE! Not the guy who didn't have anything to do with it. And yet our federal elections are nothing but hiring someone to do a job and get paid six figures for it, often after spending seven figures to obtain it (or more). If YOU vote for some sorry candidate who screws things up then YOU are directly responsible, not I. It is not MY job to "cancel your vote" by voting for (perhaps) an equally unqualified bozo. The reality is this: IF you vote, YOU have no right to complain.
2) The political parties have taken the process hostage to the point it's meaningless.
Okay, so let's say you didn't vote for the current President as, in fact over one-half of all voters did not in 2016. You're not absolved if you voted for Hillary, either, because the parties have so short-circuited this process as to make it meaningless. The Democrats, since 1984, have a concept called "super delegates." Super delegates are there - let me be blunt - to make sure you pick the candidate THEY want you to pick. It's sort of like when you go to classification while joining the military, and they have you pick out what they want you to do for the next 2-6 years of your life. And 2016 is a fantastic example.
Yes, Hillary Clinton got the most votes in the Democratic primaries. But here's the catch: if you switch the vote totals for Hillary and Bernie Sanders, she STILL gets the nomination! Why? Super delegates. Indeed, this was the first race I can ever recall where in a large scale fashion super delegates - who are supposed to keep their options open until the Convention - were prominently out front to make sure that when she and Sanders tied in Iowa (and he then routed her in New Hampshire) that the point was communicated that she had "really" won because she'd won the "real" contest. The media coverage was so dictated. Furthermore, more than one Democrat would argue that "Bernie isn't even really a Democrat," which was hilarious when you remember he's been a more reliable vote for the party than Hillary Clinton ever was. So the Democrats put on a charade of a contest, picked the candidate they wanted from day one, and they called it "people participating in democracy." It was no more democracy than Communist Russia was, it was just presented that way. "But Hillary got the most votes" I've heard a hundred times. But it wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't.
The Republicans, irony of ironies, actually let their process work in 2016 and got stuck with the most bizarre result in American history. Donald Trump simply watched Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio split the same voters among themselves and waltzed his way to a nomination. The GOP knew deep down that he was an uncontrollable disaster waiting to happen, but the Republicans had spent a good 15 years mouthing conservative rhetoric while sending deficits through the ceiling, all while using the excuse "but the Democrats would have been worse." So they weren't exactly popular with their base, and the result was a TV star who was - can you believe it - the most LIBERAL Republican elected since Teddy Roosevelt.
But he sure talked tough and for some folks that was enough.
The two parties have hamstrung the process, and if you don't believe me just go ask George Wallace, John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader how "easy" it is to get on the ballot. Okay, you'd need a seance to solicit Wallace's view, but you get the point.
3) The dirty little secret is this: your taxes are going to go up, and the spending is going to go up no matter who wins the election.
It amuses me that Republicans even try this one anymore. Let me point out a truth that David Stockman, a former Congresscritter from Michigan and Reagan's OMB director, learned and touted for public consumption in "The Triumph of Politics" - nearly 90% of the federal budget CANNOT be cut. It is either protected by law or so politically fatal (e.g. Social Security) that no politician can cut it no matter how hard he (or she) tries. And because costs go up every single year, every single election is a vote for a tax increase somewhere. Unless...
4) Despite what you've been told, your grandchildren aren't paying the national debt.
Every time I hear a politician say something about "the debt we're leaving our children and grand children", I want to laugh. In my lifetime, the debt has gone only ONE direction in any meaningful way. We were one trillion dollars in debt when I first heard about it. We are now $21.6 trillion in debt meaning none of the politicians who told me their fears about this ever did a damned thing about it. Of course, the reality is that anyone who paid attention in Economics class knows that you cannot apply the standards of personal debt to the national debt for several reasons, not the least being that the national debt in some cases benefits people (unlike credit card, which benefits the banks).
5) A reminder that you're not voting your hopes, you're voting your fears.
Every election I can remember has featured the slogan, "The Lesser of Two Evils." And in all honesty, every single election save the first one (1988), I've never once voted FOR the candidate, I've voted against the one I feared more. And the reality - unless you're "really" into politics as a real-life version of football - is that most folks do the same thing.
I didn't vote for Bush in 1992 because I wanted four more years of his tax increases; I voted for him because I didn't trust Bill Clinton's promised free lunch health care. I didn't vote for Bush Jr in 2000 because of his proposal to put Social Security in the stock market, I voted out of fear that Gore making Supreme Court appointments would wind up legislating radical leftist morality under the religion of environmentalism. I didn't vote for McCain in 2008 because he was a 72-year old man who had just picked a thoroughly unqualified potential Commander-in-Chief, and I didn't vote for Obama because I feared his health care plan if passed would raise my taxes and premiums as, in fact, it did.
Or I'm told that Candidate C "favors killing babies," as if that one candidate can stop abortion. Or inversely I'm told Candidate R "isn't protecting our kids from school shootings" as if that candidate had anything to do with it or if that candidate could have stopped it. And Candidate K is a racist based on something he said 40 years ago even though I'm not supposed to hold what Candidate L did at the same age against her.
The reality is that voting thus becomes a purely "negative" practice. I vote Democrat because I fear Trump, or I vote Republican because I fear Nancy Pelosi.
6) Some people have WAY TOO MUCH invested in the so-called outcomes.
I have seen people come absolutely unglued when a particular candidate won. I've seen people get depressed for months and talk about nothing else except how much they "hate" President So And So. And then I'll watch them justify it with irrational arguments. On the flip side, I've seen folks act about like I did in high school when Alabama won the previous Saturday, somehow thinking the winning candidate is a personal vindication of sorts for them - their ideology, their "way of life," their personal beliefs/opinions, or even themselves. Quite frankly, if you let who holds office determine how you feel, you're a pretty shallow person in the first place who probably needs hobbies beyond politics anyway.
Much has been made in the last two years of people who are "with Trump no matter what." Some of these people frighten me, but then again, so the people who think "Trump is wrong no matter what." These kinds of irrational thoughts border on cultic non-thinking. It's one thing to think in a national crisis, "Man, I'm glad Candidate X is making the decisions rather than Candidate Whom X Beat." It's quite another to beholden your allegiance to any leader or politician to the point your own personality is subsumed to his (or her) politics. Yes, there are a lot of people who contort themselves into unrecognizable positions because they're "with Trump." But guess what? Those very same types of people were here during Obama's Presidency, too, you just weren't paying close enough attention. In fact, every single President has a swath of the electorate that seems to be under his spell, and if you don't believe me just try to say something negative - ANYTHING negative - about Ronald Reagan at any Republican gathering. Say that Reagan ran up the deficit, you get told "but the Democrats owned Congress." Say that Reagan blew it in Lebanon and got some Marines killed in an ill-defined mission, you get told "but there was no way to know that would happen because that was a new kind of warfare." Point out that Reagan - honestly, might I add - suggested he would appoint judges that would overturn Roe v Wade but appointed two who would not, you get told "but the Democrats blocked Bork." There is literally nothing some folks cannot turn into an argument to blame the opposition.
And this same fact holds true for Obama, Bush, or Clinton. I'm told repeatedly that Clinton ran a surplus, but when I point out he didn't have a surplus until Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott enforced his own 1993 budget deal on him (which he fought after agreeing to it), they switch subjects to the economy. Point out the "Bush recession" ended in March 1991 while Clinton didn't even bother to announce his candidacy until October and didn't take office until January 1993, and they work their way back to the surplus.
These are folks who voted for someone and desire validation for their choice. When you don't make a choice, you simply don't have this problem.
7) Make your voice heard
I'm not sure which cliche' is the worst, but this one is highly competitive. If the one about not complaining is Alabama then this one is surely Clemson. Your senator or representative in Washington - regardless of party, regardless of ideology - doesn't give a rat's behind about you. Believe it or not, that person is not thinking about you when casting a vote, when sitting in a meeting about an important issue the government is preparing to screw up, or before laying down with the mistress to catch a little Jimmy Fallon before going home to the wife.
Let me show you how this works, and while I'll use Pelosi, you can fill in with any Republican leader's name as well.
Pelosi: "We need your vote on this bill to bankrupt the United States and make us the permanent slave of Russia."
Congresscritter: "I can't do that, my constituency is against it by a 4 to 1 margin."
Pelosi: "Fine, you'll either vote with us and hope they forget it or you'll lose that committee you're chairing on curing cancer. Let us know your decision by one today."
At which point the Congresscritter's only choices are vote for it, lose the only power they have, or resign and lose the only power they have.
They don't hear YOUR voice, they hear the voice of the party leader telling them "get on board or you're going overboard."
8) The Presidential candidates are thoroughly unqualified.
The movement of the parties to popular vote primaries combined with television has led to a litany of thoroughly unqualified candidates that run for President despite having nothing that commends them for the job. If the party is dumb enough to nominate them, I have to live with that decision.
The last thoroughly qualified person to run and win was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Every President since then (and most of the nominees) have been "qualified" only by the bare Constitutional standard and with nothing to commend them for the job. Bill Clinton may have been governor of Arkansas for 12 years, but most governors are not even as powerful in their states as the Lt Governor is (New Jersey is a notable exception). He'd avoided military service at all costs, he had a morally bankrupt personal life that was just begging for him to be the willing sycophant of a foreign government, and his entire life had been one public sector job after another. George W Bush was the Hillary Clinton of the Republican Party, a person who was only even considered for President because of his last name. Even his military service was somewhat questionable (and certainly had a gap in it that was never fully explained), and he'd failed five businesses. When he exploded the budget deficit, he was merely acting on what he'd learned in business. Barack Obama had a whopping 143 days in the Senate (in actual service there) and was a great speaker. In terms of Senate seniority he was at the back of the line - and yet he moved right to the front with his soaring oratory about us healing our land and other empty-headed mantras from the Left Wing Temple of Doom.
9) If you lived somewhere without the right to vote....
"But if you didn't have the right to vote" is yet another hypothetical that doesn't apply. For starters, what is the proposed circumstance? Did I once have the right but someone took it away or did I never have it in the first place? The latter will hardly elicit much outrage since you can't really miss something you never had. The former is a better argument except for this: millions of people with the right to vote are going into ballot boxes and punching holes (or whatever) and doing everything right only to have a machine decide their vote doesn't count because it didn't read the dimpled or hanging chad (or whatever).
Having the "right to vote" isn't the same thing as my vote actually counting. It's sort of like having health care insurance isn't the same as having health care access, not that you can explain this to clowns in DC.
10) But if you're drawing money from the government, the type of people in charge could affect you
That's true, and it's why the military vote leans Republican. The problem is that this has already happened. Several years ago, we veterans who draw VA compensation experienced the Democrats' shell game firsthand. First, they suspended our COLAs for two years. In one of those years, they deducted the $250 stimulus we received from our VA pay - and then taxed it. Now, I'm one of the fortunate ones, and I'm not complaining, I'm only making the point: I've experienced this firsthand and so has every other person who has ever drawn a military retirement or VA compensation.
Oh, and the VA hospitals have been a disaster for at least forty years or more through multiple administrations of both parties.
Voting hasn't made any of that any better. Remind me again about what a patriotic thing this is?
11) But people died for your right to vote
Actually, they died for my freedom to choose whether or not to vote.....if you're going to use that argument.
12) The Political Parties ensure recycled crap in government
Sure enough, every so often someone comes along running for President and insists that "change" (never defined but usually all I have left after the tax increases) is coming if you elect that person. So in 1980, Ronald Reagan comes along and tells us it's time for a change. He wins a colossal landslide and what does he do?
a) he picks the previous two Republicans Presidents's chief of staff as Secretary of State
b) he chooses a Secretary of Defense who held several positions in the previous Republican administration (Nixon)
c) he very nearly chooses the last Republican President (Ford) as his running mate
d) he replaces the first Secretary of State with Nixon's former secretary of both Labor and Treasury
e) he appoints the former Solicitor General under Nixon to the Supreme Court, but the nomination is scuttled
f) he wants another Nixon former Treasury secretary for his Cabinet, but he gets turned down
So Reagan is followed by Bush, who leaves a few of Reagan's late term choices on in his own Cabinet. In 1992, Bill Clinton gets elected promising change. He wins a plurality vote and an Electoral College landslide, and what does he do?
a) he picks a former officeholder in the Johnson and Carter administrations for Secretary of State
b) he picks a former Carter administration Director of Policy Planning for his National Security Advisor
c) he picks Carter's "counsel to the President" for the same job
d) he picks a former Nixon/Ford/Reagan speechwriter as "counselor"
His change sounded a lot more like "some now older guys who were in the Carter administration"
So Bush the Younger comes along promising change and what do we get? A bunch of his Daddy's old pals (Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, Mitch Daniels).
It's literally shoveling the same garbage around and calling it something different.
CONCLUSION
In short, voting in the federal and state elections is pretty much a waste of time with no tangible benefit for anyone save the winner. It doesn't matter what they tell you before the election, it only matters what they actually do afterwards. And the litany of liars is simply too much for me to continue the charade that my "voice" or "vote" actually amounts to a hill of beans. The local elections, at least, have the potential to bear some important fruit, but even what can be done there is often controlled by the All Seeing Eye of Big Brother.
Look, if you want to vote, I'm not going to try to stop you nor am I going to judge you for doing so. My problem is that too many people who do vote won't grant me the same courtesy.
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