Marking My Words

I quit.

I have quit meat, cigarettes, coffee... I know I have the will to drop habits and I know I have the wherewithal to realize when something is toxic. So I am taking the opportunity to write this post as a formal resignation from this election cycle. I don't mean to be petty or combative even; not throwing a temper tantrum, I'm just exhausted. I choose to drop out; I have encountered too much resistance and even downright hostility to engage in this any further, and the scary thing, the genuinely frightening thing is that this is coming from people who should be allies. So this is my letter of concession. I refuse to post anything else political, especially about this election, until way after November. It's my own little one man protest. I don't expect it will accomplish much, but I would like to take the opportunity to mark my own words and thoughts in this insane year of post-Bowie reality.

I feel like a bit of history is in order, as in my own history.  So often when I get in debates with people, it feels like we are tossing a ball back and forth but we are standing on entirely different piles of pretext context and subtext and in this climate of sound bites and gotcha media moments, the time and attention true dialog needs and deserves is rarely ever afforded. So, to understand my points, maybe understand me a little bit because I also feel that some of the rhetoric I have heard floating around there in the realm of what I would call "vote shaming" is decidedly ad hominem.

My foray into politics began one September morning long ago. I woke to my clock radio as was my routine so that I could get ready for my classes for the day. I reached over and hit the snooze button, but as I did, I caught the normally jovial and flippant host of the talk radio program say, "so you saw people jumping from the building?" I closed my eyes and rolled over, but couldn't fall back asleep. The snippet of the conversation was ringing in my ears. I sat up, turned back on the radio. Then I turned on the TV and I watched the World Trade Center collapse.

I was only 20 years old and in the midst of taking classes at my local community college. It's hard to really communicate the impact of that day, not because it's hard to put into words, but because my life became so definitively fractured at that moment. It was as if who I had been had died and to this day, the world as it existed before 10:28am 9/11/01 seems like some hazy alternate reality I once inhabited, and I have been drifting through this afterlife ever since. It's hard to communicate because it's hard to know myself without that day. Who I am currently is inextricably linked to that day. It's hard to know who I would have become without that day. It is too much with me, so to speak.

Of course, at 20 years old, one is in the midst of growing up anyway. Indeed, I was on my way out of my previously sheltered and self-absorbed kind of life, awakening to larger ideas and getting a sense for the world outside myself.

I was just getting hit hard by poetry shortly before, as well as authors like Terence McKenna and Kerouac. Even though I was previously sheltered, I had a strong innate understanding of what I found to be good and true and beautiful, and I always found the good and the true and the beautiful to be lacking in the consumer world I was surrounded by. I always was looking for something more genuine than what I was offered. So, to find echoes of that innate understanding in not just other people, but adults, and not just adults, but canonized adults who were part of this curriculum... that hit me just as hard as the events of September 11th. I have always, for better or worse, taken things rather seriously.

I only cried once on September 11th. It wasn't while watching TV or seeing the actual smoke on the horizon with my own eyes traveling down Route 17 in NJ. It was after I shut off the TV. I wasn't sure if I should go to my classes. My house was empty, parents at work, brothers at school, but I knew I wanted to see my friend Franz more than anything, so I decided I would make my way to campus to look for him (back in the days when you had to look for people). I got ready to leave the house and before I did I sat at the top of the stairs. The house was quiet and the sun outside was golden. I sat there and I cried not exactly because of the destruction and devastation, but because I knew we were going to war.

That was a profound moment in my life. I knew it. I had no real context of geopolitical precedent, but I knew it... maybe most people did, certainly turned out that most people wanted to, but I knew that we would go to war and I knew any idea of my generation enjoying a peaceful existence was lost and I cried.

I had no stake, no affiliation, no predetermined biases (my parents have always been philistines), I have just always been a person who has looked and listened very carefully to all of the world around him, to people and nature and my own heart and to the currents of power. My point is to tell you the following: all of my concerns and fears of the past 15 years have only grown worse: heavier, darker, more urgent, more transparent and obvious even, but never better. Not even for a second.

So this is why I would like to mark my words. I know I have little sway over your vote right now, and I'm growing to the end of my belief in voting at all but I'd like to leave this behind as a trail of breadcrumbs that we might be able to pick up in about a year or two. I would love if California and New York could give the Green Party 5% of the vote, but I am so exhausted and disgusted right now, that I might not even vote at all.

Politics won't solve our problems when they are too busy creating our problems.

Before I get to my message at large, a bit more ethos: I didn't just start paying attention to the political realm. Yes, I consumed a likely unhealthy diet of news. I read lots of books. Watched lots of documentaries. Searched out alternative sources of media. But I got involved too. I took part in historic protests. I found myself at Town Hall meetings. I marched. I rallied. And, in 2004, when Jason West defiantly began to marry same sex couples in New Paltz, I watched two of my friends get arrested at the end of our march in support of equality. Two points about that incident: 1) That was the same year Hillary Clinton outspokenly opposed same sex marriage. 2) while my friends were being arrested and the rest of us were shouting "shame!" at the police officers, I noticed an unmarked Jeep Cherokee pull up, and a man in a blazer and tie and jeans jump out and begin taking pictures of all of us. From the press, you say? Maybe. But these were the Bush years. and the fact that I could have any doubt as to his intentions speaks to how dark those times were.

Those are two very important ideas for the way I see things.

But I mean to say that I wasn't just a spectator and I wasn't just towing anybody's line. I was only concerned with justice. Which brings me to how furious I am that some of you are accusing me, or anyone who rejects both Trump and Clinton, of a kind of privileged stance. I have always taken my privilege quite seriously and tried to put it to good use. But now some of you, really some of the most privileged, some who are so privileged that they don't have to care about this realm of life until another four years roll off... some of you want to stroll in like some Catholic only going to church on Christmas to A) be so proud that you have the moral capacity to choose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump and B) tell me that my simultaneous opposition to these two despicable candidates is a product of my own privilege.

My message in part is that the only privileged position, or the most privileged position, is the idea that we have time to wait for radical change. You dig me? Only the most comfortable on this planet want to keep things the way they are and you are a privileged minority.

My message is mostly aimed at Democrats. Why is that? Well, I suppose there are a few reasons, but the main one is that we (y'all and I) both identify as "leftist" or "The Left" and the problem therein is that y'all aren't. Hillary isn't. Obama fucking ain't. As far as I can tell, the American Left is door-nail-dead right now. I can think of only two voices that represent true Leftist ideals in any kind of complete and legitimate way (especially now that Chomsky released a guide to voting for the lesser evil): Dr. Cornell West and Chris Hedges. There are some very good voices that smatter the political landscape, especially those who distanced themselves from the DNC during the primaries, but by and large, I am trying to tell you that Democrats are centrists and their drift to the right of center is constant and certain.

The term centrist is very important. Maybe some of you like that idea. No one wants to be "far-(x)". We don't want to be nutjobs. We don't want to be radicals. Right?

Conceptually speaking centrism really only means one thing: preserving the status quo. Keeping things exactly as they are. Here's the rub: Republicans are centrists too. Now, I hear you saying, "what are you talking about?? Republicans hate abortion and gay rights. And Democrats hate guns and love science etc etc." Right. I understand.

But we must take a closer look: as Chomsky once pointed out, a great way to maintain the status quo is to limit the scope of issues that exist in the public sphere but agitate fierce debate around those issues.

Listen, another caveat: I know that leftist opposition to the status quo has been mutated and caricaturized by the likes of Alex Jones in the years since 9/11, and the very act of critiquing and re-narrating the power structure cocks eyebrows and upturns noses and conjures images of tinfoil hats, but this is what I'm talking about when I say the Left is dead. Leftist critique is about speaking truth to power and it once was an intellectual enterprise. It once had among its ranks titanic figures like Chomsky, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X. These are the voices sorely absent in these very desperate times.

Here's the truth I see: Gerorge W Bush ran on an anti-abortion platform.  Doing so, he won the evangelical vote which is exactly how Reagan pushed the neoconservative agenda through the doors too and got the whole ball rolling. Similarly, Barack Obama ran on an anti-war and pro-transparency platform. NEITHER of those platforms came to fruition. Bush could have absolutely overturned Roe v. Wade. There was absolutely nothing in his way. He didn't. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize and then carried out more drone strikes than his predecessor, you know, the one we call a war criminal. And as far as transparency goes... well, not only has the NSA grown more under Obama than Bush's quaint little wire taps, we have seen the imprisonment and exile of whistle-blowers again and again. Chelsea Manning has been tortured in solitary confinement for three years. Why? For exposing war crimes. And we all know Mr. Snowden and Mr. Assange a little better, and their plights are similar though not as extreme. I guess how is exile ever not extreme? But all of this, all the things Snowden revealed about the NSA, the profound insight Assange just offered us about our political process, or what about the committee reports on CIA torture, all met with a collective shrug from "the Left."

The same "left" that called Bush a tyrant and a war criminal has done nothing but yawn as Obama carries out the same exact legacy. Yawning is actually too kind. They cheer him on. They love him. Look at him; he puts his feet up on the desk; he hangs out with Jerry Seinfeld. This guy's great.

What is going on here? The way I see it is that there are larger agendas afoot. Agendas that don't involve us. We are meant to squabble over scraps. There are indeed two Americas, but not actually divided among Republicans and Democrats, but divided along the lines of the powerful and those utilized by the powerful to maintain said power.

Think about it for a second: if the word freedom means a goddamn thing at all then the issues we exhaust ourselves with should not even be issues at all. Civil rights for the LGTBQ community? The right of women to have domain over their own bodies? Even the right to own as many goddamn guns as you want... these are non-negotiable. These are basic human freedoms in a supposedly free country that screams on and on about liberty. If these freedoms are threatened, then we stand on the White House lawn until our rights are restored. End of story. But we are too divided for that. (More on that idea later as it is actually the most important of all.)

The larger agendas are not hard to find. Maybe I take for granted my adeptness at critical reading? I don't know. But it's there nestled between the lines of news stories. It's there in the blanks of political stump speeches that we are invited to project upon. When Elizabeth Warren says "The game is rigged...." she's serious, you know? That's not hyperbole. That's not metaphor. We just fucking watched how rigged the game was as Hillary Clinton made her power grab. Because that's what it was folks. Oh, I know, Russia and Skeletor and all the other badguys out there.

All of you throwing absolute hissy fits over the encroaching shadow of Trump's reign of tyranny..... Can you please just stop for one second and realize... The RNC primaries, his rise to power were WAY MORE DEMOCRATIC THAN HILLARY'S. How does that not disgust you? How does corruption laid bare not make you recoil in absolute horror? And again, the goddamn pride some of you take in supporting her like you are doing something moral and just or even pragmatic and practical makes for that much more of absolute cognitive dissonance.

Here are the issues that matter to me, the issues of the "other" America, the hidden one, issues that lie at the margins of the normal hot-button fodder: perpetual war/imperialism/hegemony, NSA reaching into the lives of normal innocent citizen/panopticon, militarized police and their clearly documented and rampant and murderous abuse of power, the use of state violence to oppress our first amendment right to peaceful protest, the cultural and moral degradation that lead to countless instances of mass violence, the sinfully exorbitant budget of homeland security and defense spending, campaign finance/lobbying/corporations as people/corporate welfare/the wealthy rising above the rule of law/TPP, universal healthcare (which Obamacare is 100% fucking not), the rape and pillage of the middle class, the rape and pillage of the natural world, to return to imperialism: corporate exploitation of foreign labor and resources, America's many many industrial complexes: military, prison, pharmaceutical, agricultural, news media, the fucking college industrial complex which is quite near and dear to my heart (and empty wallet)....

There's really only one reason why those issues matter most to me. It's really quite simple: They are the things that drive our way of life. The oil in our cars, the relatively cheap consumer goods, the comfy cozy life of dreams and aspirations is brought to you by all of the bullshit listed above. It is the bedrock of our way of life and that's the reason why it will never be critiqued by the two major parties. But, we don't even have to touch the amoral and unjust nature of our way of life because it's even more simple than that: Our way of life is unsustainable. We currently live in a totally dysfunctional country. The emperor has no clothes. Our infrastructure is collapsing. Our drinking water is poisoned. Our political process is totally broken. The engines of capitalism are hanging by a thread. We are dangling over a precipice from which, if we fall, we will not return. No one's getting married if the global economy collapses. The Supreme Court won't mean shit if we pass the brink of disaster.

And now, 30 years since Ronald Reagan began this ball rolling, you want to blame me for Trump because I have taken the time and dedication to be invested in my understanding of this bullshit? Because I understand that we can run endless circles around the issues of obvious America, the ones we are encouraged to obsess over, but fuck-all will be changed about the issues in the hidden America if either of these sociopaths take office?

You want to blame me for Trump? How about you blame the fucking DNC for tipping the election towards a detestable candidate and away from a man with more integrity than ANY POLITICIAN I HAVE EVER SEEN who also BEAT TRUMP IN EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL POLL. Though, I have news for you: he wasn't looking so hot in the perpetual war/imperialism/hegemony category either.

You know who you should blame for Trump, actually? Blame Bill Clinton. And Hillary Clinton too. and Reagan, and the long line of neoconservative/neoliberal Presidents who did everything in their power to absolutely gut and eviscerate the middle class and begin the migration of wealth toward the 1%. NAFTA for example has done nothing but fan the flames of the the legitimate anger and disillusionment and disaffection and radicalization of the millions of Americans who are now supporting Trump. Legitimate anger behind an illegitimate candidate is some pretty fucking bad news. No doubt. But forget Hillary creating ISIS. She and her husband created Trump. She and her husband began the mass incarceration of the prison industrial complex which again, devastated communities across the country. The devastation to the middle class that followed the deregulation of Wall Street created Trump.

I really had nothing to do with it.

Of course Trump is an imbecile. Of course he is a histrionic boy king. Are you seriously proud that you figured that out? Are you seriously going to stand on the ash heap that you call the moral high ground with your chest puffed out? Are you seriously going to hang on every word he says in hopes that you will find the one irrefutable gaff that will suddenly disarm his momentum? Here's the deep bitter irony: you won't. Do you know why? Because your support of Hillary is just as blind, knee-jerk, impervious to reason, fear-based, identity-based, insubstantial, and fucking batshit crazy.

The man is a fucking buffoon. He is a snake oil salesman. He is totally incompetent, totally amoral, totally narcissistic. His only agenda is to win, and if he does, he will 100% implode.

Hillary won't though. She is more competent. She is more qualified. But to do what?

Am I supposed to not be cynical about her VP pick? Am I supposed to just brush off the fact that she could have picked an equally historic running mate, a queer person, a person of color, a woman, all of the above? But who did she pick? The former chair of the DNC. Hmmmmm. Isn't that curious? This bland, wonder bread, no name chuckle fucker used to be the chair of the DNC. Crazy me for finding that at the very least uninspiring.

But yea, she is more competent and qualified, to do what? To maintain the status quo.

And again, I laid out my credentials to you. I would sign an affidavit that says these have been my beliefs since day one, and I promise you I have yet to be wrong. Things have yet to get better. The clouds have yet to break up. Direction has yet to change. To the precipice, full steam ahead. If Clinton wins, my concerns will not only be unaddressed but they will be made worse.

So let me begin to close this out with first a prediction, and again, we can just mark my words, and see what happens. Not only will Hillary continue down the road of perpetual war, she will begin major conflict with Russia. This was on my mind before the DNC leaks and now look: the specter is already haunting the background. The next bogeyman is lined up at the gates and he's an old classic. The Russians. Time to reboot that franchise. It was the original if you recall.

Prediction #2: Hillary will reverse her stance on the TPP. Maybe they will shuffle around some bullshit parameters and she will say "ah now it's better and I can support it," but do you understand that this document will make it legal for corporations to sue against laws that they believe hinder their ability to do business. Do you understand how fascist that is? I know the man with the bad hair who says dumb things is a total Nazi and all... but corporate lawlessness frightens me a bit. Do you understand that only Bernie's pushback made Clinton switch her stance on the TPP and I promise you it will just as easily flip back the other way. 

And finally, let me leave you with this: Ralph Nader was the best candidate for president that I have had the pleasure of supporting in my political life. And I watched spineless Democrats call him spoiler, protest his appearance at New Paltz, disrupt his Q&A session, beg him to drop out, tell me to wait for real change in the next election, to build a viable third party in the mean time, and then totally not give an ounce of shit about Obama's policies that directly mirrored Bush's, so forgive me for being disillusioned by the DNC, but they can seriously go fuck themselves.

But here's why Nader was the best: he was human. Politicians are written speeches. They are not human. They are talking points that are compiled from market research and focus groups. Their language is carefully crafted and their views are purposefully narrow; they will never critique the deeper structural issues of American power because it is the structure of American power that funds and props up these candidates. They are in the pocket, so to speak. That is exactly what Bernie was talking about.

Ralph Nader was human and therefore he had the ability to address issues that lie outside the scope of normal candidates. My favorite thing that he said was this: the real problem with America is that we no longer create our own culture. Absolutely profound statement. When's the last time you heard a politician make a profound statement? Culture should be of, by, and for the people. It should be a local, indigenous, bottom up, grass roots, phenomenon. Nader was saying that we are handed culture from the top down and he was saying this about the era of mass media television, and here in the age of social media echo chambers it has morphed slightly but it certainly isn't any better.

We may have a bit more content control now, but we are wrapped tightly in cocoons of comfort and identity. There are too many Others. We all have these blinding ideologies that we cling to and we are in a perpetual arms race with the deemed opposition, the end game seems to be total annihilation. Compromise isn't possible. Dichotomies and dilemmas abound. The war of binaries wages hard and the two blinders we wear called Republican & Democrat have lead to a really staggering kind of myopia...

The beloved John Oliver recently pointed out how the Democrats' convention was uncharacteristically patriotic. I think this is actually a very astute point but he didn't really run with it. I think the worthlessness of patriotism and nationalism is very much the point right now. What exactly do we have to be proud of? We all understand that there was no America so great that we need to return to it, right? So, what are we supposed to be proud of right now? Because a black president resides over mass incarceration and militarized police execution squads?

I mean, there's a standard level of American exceptionalism that is always dished out when a politician claims (and they all do) that America is the greatest country on earth, but this rah rah of the DNC is particularly vile and inappropriate. I saw a meme posted the other day that claimed that only privileged white guys with their heads up their asses (this is literally the rhetoric of the meme) can't see the difference between Trump and Hillary. The takeaway being that all the oppressed peoples of America understand full well that Trump is the clear and present danger and Hillary is the obvious choice. And of course, I get it. I have already spoken to the fact that I have stood in defense of oppressed peoples from day one. Trump is unacceptable. But, so is Hillary, and I think once we take off our rosy white and blue glasses for a minute and consider the perspectives of oppressed all around the world, not just America, we might find that they don't see much of a difference either. Has it really become so divisive that we have forgotten that other people exist in the world besides Republicans & Democrats?

I don't think a million dead Iraqis would see any difference between Trump and Hillary. I don't think starving and impoverished and occupied Palestinians would see much of a difference. I don't think war torn Syrians or Libyans would see much of difference. I don't think the paranoid eyes on the sky in Pakistan would see much of a difference. These are realities that most Americans can't even fathom, and when you champion Hillary Clinton it sounds to me like you don't want to fathom them.

We are in a bubble. It will burst. It would be best if we willfully step outside of it and adjust, you know, take some fucking responsibility for who we are, but it will burst and it's not going to be good. 

All I can say is this: break up the binaries. Find the third voice. Don't vote for third party candidates. I don't really care anymore. The system is hopeless. But how about you. You be a third voice of tempered reason and logic who steps out of the ideological pong game, back and forth, endlessly. The medium is the message, right? Are we surprised that the political landscape is so fucking divisive and wrought with impossible impassable binaries when we are dominated by a two party stranglehold. It is toxic and we must eliminate it or we will surely perish. 

Because I will tell you this as maybe a unique insight gleaned from my 15 years of paying attention.

During the Bush years, there was that ominous feeling of oppression, where it was hard to speak out and easy to feel ostracized and marginalized. You're either with us or them, after all. When Obama got elected, it was as if some valve was opened and a bunch of steam was let off the pressure cooker. I mean, clearly, Obama wouldn't have won if a large portion of swing voters didn't come his way. But something curious happened after. Suddenly the Right stirred up a gigantic cauldron of marginalization for themselves. Suddenly counter-culture conspiracy theory wasn't about following the lines of Halliburton in Iraq. The narrative suddenly came out of the writing room of Fox News, again, Nader's words ringing in our ears; the narrative came from centralized media, blatant propaganda. Yarns were spun about Obama's death panels and socialized medicine. His secret Muslim agenda. The war on Christmas. Glenn Beck rose to power. Fox News stirred the pot with intense vigor. I stand behind the idea that the past five presidents have their hand in creating the legitimate anger behind Trump, but Fox News is clearly the reason it is directed toward an illegitimate candidate. I want people to reject Obama and Clinton for the right reasons, not the Right's reasons which are without a doubt latently racist and sexist. But my point is this: make no mistake, right or wrong impetus, Hillary Clinton is a reviled figure.

No matter which one of these people is elected, there will be no release this time. Turmoil is here to stay.