If You Vote For Harris Or Trump You Should At Least Have The Decency To Feel Gross About It
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
I don’t care who Americans vote for in November, or if they vote at all. In order to care I’d have to believe US presidential elections matter.
But they don’t matter. No matter who wins, the empire wins. No matter who loses, the world loses.
No matter how things turn out this particular time around, Democrats and Republicans will continue to win roughly 50 percent of the time each, and the US-centralized empire will continue to trudge on unaffected by the results.
I don’t care how you vote. Vote for Harris or for Trump if that’s what you feel like doing. But I do think if you vote for either of those monsters, you should at least have the decency to feel gross about it. Like you did something very dirty and shameful in order to get by.
I just think that would be the mark of someone with a well-developed moral character, who’s entering into this thing without dissociation or compartmentalization. It would indicate that you live your life with your eyes wide open, being real about what’s real and not hiding from unpleasant truths to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings.
Maybe you have some well-founded reasons for believing Trump or Harris is the lesser evil in this election. Maybe you can make some strong arguments that Harris will be a bit better on civil rights, or that Trump might be better on Ukraine. But what you definitely can’t do is make any rational case that as president either of them would be anything besides an immensely depraved mass murderer of unforgivable criminality.
If you want to vote for Harris, then vote for Harris. But do it with the full knowledge that you are voting for someone who has spent a year supporting genocidal atrocities, and who has been winning endorsements from some of the most evil warmongers ever to set foot in your nation’s capitol. At the very least have the decency to honor the mountains of victims who will suffer in ways you can’t even imagine under a Harris administration by casting your vote mournfully, resolute in your understanding that despite getting your vote as the perceived lesser evil, she is still your mortal enemy. At the very least you owe them that much.
Don’t have “joy” about it. Don’t do it proudly. Don’t make cutesy little memes or make it fun. You are doing something ugly, and it should feel a bit ugly.
If you want to vote for Trump, then vote for Trump. But do it with the understanding that he is being backed by some of the most virulent Zionists on earth and will throw his weight behind Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Don’t lie to yourself that he’s going to end the wars and fight the deep state. Be real about the inevitability that he will continue the warmongering of his predecessors and spend his term advancing the depraved longstanding agendas of the US intelligence cartel, just like he did last time.
Do it with a heavy heart. Do it with revulsion. Do it with the same amount of pride you would have if you were performing fellatio on a profoundly unkind man in exchange for hard drugs. That’s about the feeling it deserves.
If you do this, then I will believe you if you tell me you’re voting for who you sincerely believe is the lesser evil. If your emotional relationship with your vote for Harris or Trump is anything other than this, then you’re probably doing it for some other reason and not being real with yourself about it, like blind partisan team loyalty or something. If it doesn’t make you intensely uncomfortable, it’s because that’s where your comfort zone really is.
If we want to live in a truth-based society, then part of our role in helping to build that world is to be true to the truth and to be real about reality. Don’t hide things from yourself. Don’t compartmentalize away from unpleasant facts.
Act, and be real about what your actions are, and where they are coming from, and what their effects are likely to be.
This is the first step to becoming an authentic human being.
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