Dear U.S. Left: Stop Asking Me To Vote

Dear US Left:
With all due respect — I really do love ya, we’ve worked together and hit the barricades and been ride-or-die n’all that, but — you’ve just gotta stop this shit right now, y’all, ‘cos it’s the biggest waste of time ever at this point. Seriously, for myself and all of our comrades, I’m here to tell you, you just gotta STOP IT, brah.

Stop asking us to VOTE.

Stop asking us to play in a crooked rigged casino, to participate in a phony “democracy” and vote in a useless “election” in which the candidates and platforms are already decided by the Party and the permissible issues and voices already decided by the media. Stop asking us to drag ourselves off to participate in an empty ritual in an empty institution which has achieved absolute zero.

Stop insulting our intelligence by asking us to participate in the “democracy” of a nation in which the State, the Party and Establishment institutions have at long last finally, thoroughly, utterly and completely alienated us and then relentlessly implores us to participate in their useless, capitalist media-controlled “democratic” institutions. After doing their level best to beat down and silence the dissent and outrage of billions across the nation and the Earth, they’ve got the spectacular gall to try to shame, frighten, and browbeat us into slinking back to their polls for “abortion rights” — for affluent, professional-class American women, of course; not the reproductive rights of working-class and poor women, nor immigrant women, nor Afghan or Iraqi women, and for goddamn sure not the reproductive rights of PALESTINIAN women…

After this staggering mass alienation and good old-fashioned ideological witch hunt, the likes of the Democratic Party and MSNBC just can’t shut the hell up about “abortion rights”, and their broadcasts are wall-to-wall with the Trump Trials and the threat to Democracy™. The more of that crap I hear, the more it disgusts and amuses me because the more I think back, the less evidence I see that Democracy™ has ever brought us anything approaching absolutely jack in the way of positive, substantive change; that voting for politicians in an “election” has ever done anything but drag our misery out endlessly while we wait around for the politicians to fight our struggle for us.

That “democratic” institutions in a “democratic” nation practically break their necks to be first in line to suppress the People’s voices and cover their eyes and ears while two “democratic” nations with the assistance of the “International Community” carry out the most horrid industrial-strength genocide of the past century should tell us everything we need to know about Democracy™ at this point. It’s truly gobsmacking that after six or seven months of some of the most vicious beatdowns on dissent and public expression worldwide, the Democratic Party — and their pals on cable TV “news” and on the US Left — still have the nerve to come around whining and scraping and begging us to participate in their goddamn little fake Democracy™, to vote in their empty-ass “elections” which change absolutely nothing.

Malcolm X teaches us that “democracy is hypocrisy”; he teaches us that every bit of positive change won for the People anywhere on Earth was not the result of “democracy”, but by the People, the people who were willing to organize and take direct action on their own behalf and do whatever it takes to achieve what they deserve and what belongs to them — up to and including armed force. Malcolm X teaches us this, Lenin teaches us this, Abbie Hoffman and Audre Lorde teach us this — hell, even George Carlin teaches us this.

“Democracy” is an impediment to change. “Democracy” is a prison, and we need to jump the guards and bust out. At this point, it should be abundantly clear that “revolution is the ONLY solution” isn’t just a tight, clever slogan, and it’s time to cut the crap and get the hell on with it.

Stop asking us to try to tear down the Master’s house with the Master’s tools.

Stop asking us to VOTE.
— Mike Flugennock, Washington DC, May 2024.

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