10/31/2024
Today we're driving back to the US to vote. I no longer live in a "blue" area of the US where it's possible to vote for someone besides a Democrat without concern, and I have grown disillusioned with the whole "vote your conscience" thing in our winner-take-all two party system. The only thing that vote will do is help the other side, and in this election that's a bad idea. How is that a vote of conscience? You behave if your conscience didn't know that a vote for Stein (or pick your favorite spoiler) will help elect he-who-shall-not-be-named. As if Stein could win when we know she can't. So the "vote your conscience" non-vote will help elect a known fascist. I don't see that as consistent with my conscience at all.
I know that, like me, most of my friends are very unhappy with the Biden administration's continued support of Zionist Israel and their genocidal bombing of Gaza (and now Lebanon and Iran). Biden and Harris did not create that crisis, and they seem just as incapable of ending it (largely because of Netanyahu's intransigence) as any vote for a third party candidate, or continued posting on Facebook, or marching in the streets, encampments, etc. have been. If those friends imagine that voting for someone other than Harris will fix things, think again.
Facts are that Zionists in the US have very strong lobbies and donate lots of money to elections. There are more Christian Zionists than Jewish people in the US (roughly double, in fact), so just stop now if you're going to accuse me of being anti-semitic. I am anti-Zionist, anti-anything that says my race, religion, etc. is better than yours. So if you're running for office, you can't risk turning off that tap of election cash. It's a fact in our money-take-all system created by the CItizen's United ruling. I still have some shred of faith that once elected, Harris will help stop the holocaust in Palestine.
I have found myself this last week of pre-election media getting more and more fearful for the fate of the US. I know that might sound funny from someone who has actually moved to Canada because of the crazy politics, mass shootings, and everyday fascism in the US, but it's a fact. I feel like I'm holding my breath until we know the results. We have voting boxes in blue states being bombed, the Supreme Court disenfranchising people in Virginia, active voter suppression at the polls, billionaires bribing voters, and the network with something like 75% market pe*******on broadcasting lies and pro-fascist messages all day long to people who live with their TVs in their ears all day.
I'm still in shock from the pictures I saw at Madison Square Garden of people holding signs saying "mass deportation now." You know that the crazy politicians are saying this stuff, but all those signs made me feel a deep existential dread. When you combine that with the post-election violence of our last election, I fear that civil war will break out. No, not the kind where troops line up across from each other in a field to shoot it out like a duel (that's how the last civil war started), but in a dramatic increase of shootings and other violence. All this "enemy within" nonsense gives people the "right" to go after anyone they don't agree with, or whose skin color is different, or whose sexual orientation is different, or or or. It's insanity and it has to be stopped. I fear it will get worse before it gets better.
Prove me wrong. Vote for Harris.
