A Dis-Spiriting Election

The U.S.  presidential election approaches, a lesser evil contest between Trump and Biden.

“Do I vote against Trump or help Trump?” Noam Chomsky asks.

The truth is that the choice offered is an illusion. Voters are held hostage by both parties. The Democratic Party is positioned against universal healthcare, ending military aggression, stronger environmental protection, and fair distribution of wealth. By voting for the Democrats at the ballot box, the electorate validates and legitimizes a party that perpetuates war, racism and exploitation which existed long before Trump appeared on the scene.

Americans are programmed every four years for participation in an election that is usually described as the most important since the last one. Eligible voters will choose neither the ruling power’s candidates who act as  puppets for Wall St. This time around the liberal media are telling us that the fear of fascism and end of our democracy is reason to vote the lesser evil. Talk of “our” democracy is like the slaves referring to “our” plantation. The fact is that plutocrats and the oligarchs own and control America’s democracy. “We, the people” have learned only too well how to be slaves. Worse, we have come to think of our servitude as liberty. “We, the people” are asleep. Time to wake up, fellow-workers, and break free of our chains. Election issues such as Trump’s personal taxes or Hunter Biden’s business speculation are irrelevant to the real interests of working people which do not feature on the media agenda. People seem content to sit back and watch the reality TV that passes for politics today. It’s the equivalent of bread and circuses, a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize and control a population. upcoming election will keep workers divided and at each other’s throats, so busy fighting each other that they will never unite against capitalist tyranny. It is time for us all to refuse to be pacified, patronized or placated. The poor are growing. Racial justice and human rights are increasingly non-existent. We are sheep. We are being bred to be followers.

The American political system, from its very inception, was never intended to be democratic. It was designed to be always in favor of the wealthy despite the noble ideals of many of the participants and ever since the history of United States contains the dark shadows of oppression and repression. The deep injustices were covered up by patriotic symbols: the flag, the national anthem and legends that turned the founding fathers and the industrial barons into heroes. Regardless of who is president or the party which controls Congress the official narrative remains one that glorifies the military and worships plunder, justified in the name of Manifest Destiny. The culture of indigenous peoples and the ecology of nature are destroyed in the pursuit of profit for the corporate masters behind the scenes.

One’s refusal to submit to the choice that is offered on the ballot is not throwing one’s vote away nor a mere gesture. It is an act of civil disobedience. Another world is possible, but not without us fighting for it. We must defeat this malignancy of the “lesser of two evils” politics so that we claim our own power.