There’s A First Time For Everything. And A Last Time Too.
So I heard there’s a presidential election this year. I voted in one of those once. The last one actually. Put aside all my years of swearing that I never would because it just encourages the motherfuckers and all. It was like my big thing, my big gesture of being a good citizen after I finished my eight year prison sentence. Actually it was more that I just wanted to help a black dude be president cause I knew it would drive the bigots bat shit.
Don’t get me wrong, I studied up on the whole presidential race that year and like so many millions of others I was duly impressed with the whole HOPE and CHANGE thing. Obama seemed like a nice enough guy too, and he seemed a good bit more intelligent than the other dude. But I secretly liked the other dude as well, more as a charachter than for his dumb politics. I mean, McCain was sort of a likable fellow unless you happen to be the type who automatically demonizes every last conservative on Earth. He was sort of just a doddering old dude who did a lot of time in a prison camp. I mean, I could relate to that even though the place where I did time was really incomparable to his situation. But honestly I tend to like politicians more who make tons and tons of gaffes anyway, and he had his share of them. It’s kind of endearing when they fuck up the script and reveal themselves to be just as clueless and all too human as the people who’s votes they’re trying to scam.
But I voted for Obama, of course. And then nothing really changed. And the only hope I had was hoping this motherfucker would actually do some shit. But he didn’t. Well, he gave a bunch of filthy rich bankers even more fucking money if that counts. People want to act like he accomplished some shit by ordering the hit on Bin Laden. But he didn’t kill anyone, he just gave the orders. Somebody else did the killing, somebody else took the risk. He was just like every other cowardly head of state who sends young men and women out to do their killing, and to catch bullets and IED fragments on their orders. Motherfucker you want my vote this November go grab a rifle and go to Afghanistan yourself.
But I should have known better than to even vote. Actually I did know better, and I went against my own better judgement. Cause it would have made no difference at all, except that I wouldn’t have spent these past few years feeling cheated. Feeling played. Same thing would have happened if I voted for the other guy, or for an independent or Libertarian or the commie party candidate or whoever. Cause aint none of these bastards gonna do some shit to make a real appreciable difference in my fucking life. None of them are going to legislate some shit to make groceries more affordable, or give me a way to get my fucking teeth fixed before they fall out of my goddam head. Aint none of them even gonna give me affordable health care-and I mean some shit I can actually afford when I’m making less than 18, 000 a year and supporting a family.
It’s ridiculous. And it’s why I don’t really write about politics here. It just makes me fume. These motherfuckers dupe everybody time and time again and we still believe in this faux democracy. Fuck this shit, I’ll sooner man the barricades with a molotov in one hand and a black flag in the other than cast another fucking ballot. Not that anything so crucial is going to happen anyway. This is, after all America, and despite the near historic wealth disparities and rampant joblessness most people are content to sit idly by until somebody-like the Occupy movement-actually does something…and then the public gets into an uproar about “those goddam dirty hippies and fascist anarchist communists trying to subvert this country”. Then they go out and vote for the next charlatan who can successfully sell them the best dream.
Be careful – you start talking like this and soon they will be pointing the terrorism finger at you. …but don’t worry, I’ll be right there next you. I’m sure I’m on some watch list somewhere already. Shit, I’m seriously considering voting for Ron Paul just to prove a fucking point. I really don’t trust any career politician anymore. Once they get comfortable, it becomes more about keeping their jobs and getting a promotion than it does about actully making things work. Maybe on voting day, I’ll drive out your way and we can sit outside the voting center with some lawn chairs and beers and heckle the sheep as they file in. That actully seems more productive to me than actually casting a vote in the current system.
Yeah, it’s a shame that it can even occur to us to make half jokes about watch lists and everything for simply talking shit on the American political system-I mean, something like that used to just seem so absurd it bordered on unthinkable. 20-25 years ago someone would say something like that and the next thing you’d expect them to start talking about was the Bilderberg conspiracy, black helicopters or the health benefits of wearing tin foil headgear. Nowadays its just the way things are, the state has successfully created that whole spectre lurking behind everything we do and say and think even, watching. It’s always there, the sort of manufactured awareness of the “all seeing eye” keeping tabs on shit. The fact that it would even become apparent to anybody, to the point of it just being another banality of everyday life in the 21st century, to actually consider that the government would do something about someone who said something disparaging about its machinations…I mean, whether the bastards would or wouldn’t doesn’t even matter-the poison has already been injected, the fear and paranoia already sown, and any true sense of opposition or resistance to the ruling cabal outside their prescribed set of standards for effecting so-called change-just slowly dies.
Ron Paul is another one, one of those politicians I kind of admire simply because he’s a charachter. I think of all the candidates his role has been most important as a sort of instigator to bring up some good questions about the whole clusterfuck the state has perpetuated. I don’t agree with all of his views, to me he’s a bit over focused on the anarcho-capitalist ideal of unbridled free marketeering being some sort of social pancea. When historically things like that have brought the world such heinous practices as chattel slavery and young children having been exploited for wage labor in the coal mines that made big businessmen filthy rich in this part of the country about a hundred years ago. I’m not saying government hyper regulation and the legislating of human behavior is necessarily the answer either, but people tend to get the government they deserve, in that until it’s just not socially and morally acceptable to exploit and fuck people over for the sake of concentrating wealth…then the laissez faire economic model is just a sad joke. I did think Ron Paul’s cameo in the film Bruno was the best part of the movie though, and I admire that he was a good sport about it when the subject came up afterwards. Plus, when it all comes down to it the idea of an old country doctor running the country is more attractive than that of a businessman or lawyer or someone who signs death warrants as a governor doing it. But it wouldn’t matter in the end, whoever steps into the presidency never really runs a fucking thing-they just talk a lot and do what they’re told to to to make sure the empire prospers for the few and so the rest of us dirty proles don’t get out of line. So we can continue to work, consume and obey like we’re supposed to.
Heckling voters would be kind of fun I guess, but I kind of already feel bad enough for them cause you know deep down they understand the futility of the whole thing and they’ve just kind of resigned themselves to it. I mean, one thing you wont really see is a radical militant voter. Nobody is all that stoked on it, not even the people who hang out at bus stops and shit getting people to register. It’s kind of a “Well, we all know this whole system is a farce…but we’d appreciate a weak gesture on your part so we don’t feel so bad.” I mean, that’s why I re-registered out here really, that poor kid just looked so pathetic carrying his clipboard around to all these people who would just blow him off. I just felt kind of bad for him. Plus, now I’m registered out here I can vote in local county and borough elections if I want, even though I wont vote in state or federal elections any more.