Before the US election, I talked to some people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hilary.
I asked them if they wanted Trump for President.
They all said “God, no.”
So I asked them would they vote against Trump.
They said “Hell yes, if I could.”
I said there was such a vote, it was called a vote for Hilary.
They said “I’m not voting for Hilary.”
So I asked, in that case, how they were going to vote.
They said “I probably won’t be voting.”
What they didn’t seem to understand was that not voting was still a vote.
After the election was over, and the votes were counted, everyone could see Hilary lost by just 80,000 votes.
But for some reason they couldn’t see that beforehand.
They had it in their heads that they didn’t like either candidate, so they wouldn’t vote for either.
As if electing no-one was an option, but it wasn’t.
The option was Trump or Hilary, but instead they chose to live in denial.
This is what Jean Paul Sartre called “living inauthentically”.
Lying to ourselves in order to avoid responsibility for our actions, and our inactions.
Because inactions count as much as actions.
Sartre said “We are condemned to be free”.
By refusing to vote for either Trump or Hilary many people believe they could avoid responsibility for whatever government got elected.
But not voting against something has the same effect as voting for something.
Therefore not voting for Hilary was a vote for Trump, like it or not.
That’s true for all of life.
In life we can’t avoid the consequences of our actions, or inactions.
It’s an illusion that by avoiding choosing we can opt out.
We will still take the consequences of whatever happened, we just gave away any say we had in that choice.
Because we did in fact make a choice.
We chose to let other people choose for us.
That way we could pretend whatever happened wasn’t our fault.
And that’s the game most of us play: “Don’t blame me, I didn’t choose either.”
Imagine if we did our jobs that way.
Imagine we had a choice: to either make a lot of staff redundant now, or our company would be out of business in three months.
Supposing we said “We choose to do neither.”
In that situation we can clearly see that not choosing is the same as choosing: if we don’t lay anyone off we’ll be out of business.
Therefore by choosing not to lay anyone off we’ve chosen to go out of business.
Even if we pretend we haven’t.
When we are children, we believe choices are always pleasant: which of these things do we want more?
But as grownups, we learn choices aren’t always like that.
A lot of times, choices are: which of these things do we want less?
And if we refuse to choose, if we live in denial, the choice gets made for us.
And afterwards, when it’s too late, we wish we’d chosen the other way.
That’s life: the choice gets made, with or without us.
As I heard it said about elections, the real choice is usually between ‘NO’ and ‘FUCK NO’.
I remember one election.
Candidate A had sound policies and was willing to work. But he was also a womanizer.
His opponent Candidate 1 was an armchair general. Ran a public company to the ground. But made millions for himself.
People knew A was better. But won’t vote for him because of his womanizing.
I think sometimes we forget an election is not an a la carte meal. That we can’t find a candidate who would satisfy all our requirements.
I voted for A NOT because he is a womanizer. But because his policies and other achievements were much better.
Pingback: Not changing when it is required is still voting to change... - Wakeman Consulting Group
I grew up in South Africa. So I appreciate having the ability to vote. And even though I’m disillusioned with the paries and their politics I still turn out and cast my vote. Because I know what it’s like to not be able to have a voice.
There’s the 3rd option, and one which I take.
I dont care who gets elected. All candidates are equally bad. It makes no difference who gets in.
I suppose you meant to refer to Jean-PAUL Sartre
Well spotted Daniel, no one else did
I left the top line blank on my ballot.
In Wisconsin, one of the three states that tipped the election.
I would have loved to have voted for Clinton. I waited until the last second for her to reach out to voters on her left.
She never did.
She also destroyed the Get Out the Vote effort in Wisconsin.
I worked for a guy running against Paul Ryan.
National party told Feingold and everyone else to stay out of our district, we were losers and we’d just drag everyone else down.
It worked. With party officials refusing to take sides, voter turnout in the primary was so depressed that an even lesser known candidate won. The Democrats ended up running a flat tax-hugging, anti-abortion candidate against Ryan. Three months after the election, this Mormon USN veteran announced to his wife and small children that he was now a woman.
Ryan usually wins 60-40. Thanks to the Einsteins at Clinton HQ refusing to challenge Ryan, he won re-election 85-15, giving Trump more than enough extra votes to win Wisconsin. (Also enough to cost Feingold his shot at beating Ron Johnson for the Senate seat.)
So I didn’t vote for Clinton. She did her best to lose, and I saw no reason to save her from herself.
Politics isn’t binary, even in a two-party system.
The Clintons took over the Democratic party.
The Clintons broke the Democratic party.
The Clintons are refusing to give the party back to its natural constituency.
2018 will be a disaster.
If was an American, I would have voted for Bernie Sanders. Hillary should have been adult enough to have gotten out of the way for the greater good of the country but she failed to do so. Self will, too much pride and arrogance resulted in her not only failing to be elected but placing the whole of America, in uncertainty and the knock-on effect of that is we have a global tweet in our midst.