It’s time for a very, VERY unpopular political opinion but – screw it – we all need to grow up and finally hear the hard truth…
America, your vote almost certainly won’t matter. On Election Day, work and donate your earnings to an uncorrupted charity instead.
I understand that no one wants to admit how useless voting is because it makes us feel safe to buy into the lie sold to us for centuries. But, as the comedian George Carlin once said, “That’s why they call it the American dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
We as humans want to believe we have control because it makes us feel safe, and voting looks and feels like control, but it does not mean you have made any real difference. The white, wealthy men who are spending billions a year lobbying politicians and securing judges in their back pockets, are the ones who hold the ultimate vote and they don’t give a f*ck what is best for everyone. I couldn’t possibly be telling you anything a person with a mind of their own doesn’t already know deep down.
Politicians and political pundits have strategic reasons to push people to vote. They want to win, after all, to gain money and power. Don’t fall for it. Your vote almost certainly won’t matter. You have as much chance of harming others as you do of helping.
It’s just straight up incoherent to say every vote helps. Republican and Democratic voters always cancel each other out eventually. As soon as there is a Republican party in office, they will surely negate the policies that the Democratic party instituted before them, and vice versa. It’s always been just a perpetual political pendulum of pointlessness. We all have enough common sense by now to realize this fact, right?
So, about now, you’re wondering why I’m daring to harsh your voting buzz. Well, it’s because most citizens are ignorant of basic political facts. They lack the social scientific knowledge needed to evaluate these facts. They process news in biased and self-serving ways. Thinking you’re the exception to the rule — the rational, informed person among the unreasonable — is unexceptional. Everyone thinks that.
Your vote matters only if you break a tie. The most optimistic theory in political science estimates that voters in swing states have a 1-in-10 million chance of deciding the presidential election. Everyone else’s chances are far lower. Casting a vote is thus like donating a Powerball ticket to Australian wildfire relief: 999,999,999 times out of a billion, you’ll achieve nothing.
And don’t even get me started on why your vote doesn’t matter due to the corrupt loophole of the electoral college.
It gets worse, folks. As far as our best evidence throughout history has shown — it does not matter which side wins. In the American Political Science Review (the premier journal in political science), it has been carefully and rigorously measured how parties affect economic, education, crime, family, social, environmental and health outcomes. They find zero difference between Republican and Democratic state governments.
Voting also becomes pointless when we don’t hold the elected accountable for their corrupt actions while in office.
So there’s the harsh truth. Unless the 98% are ready to stop fighting against each other, and unite to fight and overthrow the REAL enemy (the wealthiest among us), there is simply no point in playing into their zero sum con game.
But, there is still something useful you can do while you’re waiting to get fed up enough for a revolution so, I will suggest it again. If you really want to help others in the mean time, do some diligent research to find an UNCORRUPTED charity, spend Election Day working, and then donate your earnings. You’ll do a thousand times more good than any voter is.
DIARY OF A MAD EXPAT 