2024 Election Special! (or Not So Special)
With So Much Talk, Let's Take a Walk ...
I remember the first time I voted: 1994. Absentee ballot (I was in college). I was glad to do it. I grew up in a culture that praised voting, so it was easy for me to copy that sentiment. As I’ve admitted, I used to be a statist.
I remember the last time I voted: 2016. Already souring on the whole notion of government — and pretense that government must be good if people have the privilege of voting — I gave it one last hurrah. A presidential contest primarily between a paradoxically everyman billionaire (Donald Trump) and potentially historic genitalia (Hillary Clinton) was bound to provide some humor!
As I described my final election to Monica Perez on her livestreamed podcast (replays available at YouTube and Twitter/X) a few weeks ago:
I voted for [2016 Libertarian nominee] Gary Johnson. And then as soon as the election was over, I spent two weeks absolutely berating every Hillary Clinton voter I could find for costing Gary Johnson the election.
Monica and I had a good laugh about it.
But the larger point is that I became a former participant in government rituals, a former apologist for the regime (no matter who held offices).
I walked away.
The more things change …
My most recently published interview delved even more into government and people’s willingness — or unwillingness — to participate in it. Adam Haman invited me to his “Haman Nature” podcast (listen at YouTube, and here at Substack!) episode for Oct. 21, 2024. During our conversation, Adam observed:
The most religious people I run across tend to be shifting positions away from worshiping the state, towards libertarianism. Some of them go all the way to voluntarism or anarchism.
Adam asked if I saw a similar trend. I’m not sure I have on a large scale, but I’m hopeful it’s happening (organizations like The Bad Roman Project provide optimism). Such a shift would make logical and ethical sense, as I explained:
Maybe part of it is because the State has become so ubiquitous and so intrusive that people are like, “Wait a minute, I signed up for protecting people from robbery and rape and theft. I didn’t sign up for telling me what products I have to purchase for my health, or for my food, or telling me how to run my business. I didn’t sign up for that!”
Because as government metastasizes, people are confronted with what government really is, and then they come to their reckoning: “What is it I really believe and what is it that I really think is my highest value, the kind of thing that I would sacrifice for?”
That’s what happened, gradually, for me. The closer I got to genuinely good neighborliness — the anarchism/voluntarism of Jesus and the Early Church — the farther I found myself from the poisonous mindset of citizenship.
… The more things stay the same
Government didn’t only become evil in the last few years, nor once you or I reached the age of reason.
Coercive civil authority is inherently, intrinsically evil. Always has been. Always will be. Yes, even yours. Yes, even if there’s voting. Yes, even if there’s a written document (like, say, a Constitution).
Or, as author Christopher Cook put it recently in Chapter 2, Part 12, of his treatise, The Distributed Nation, currently being published serially on Substack:
1. No involuntary governance is morally permissible.
2. Democracy does not solve #1.
3. A constitutional republic does not solve #2.
The essential evil of imposed, hierarchical social order spans all forms and names given to government, all times in history, and all places in the world. And the electoral nature of democracies/republics reinforces, rather than cures, the problem. Letting people participate in government gives people extra incentive to pretend government is good. But the supposed “civic virtue” fails to negate the core, evil aspects.
Additionally, voting is wrought with ethical and logistical failures.
Investigative reporter and book author Jim Bovard has covered presidential elections for almost four decades of corruption and propaganda, all of it sanitized in the minds of most folks by the presence of the Holy Vote (“What I’ve Learned Covering Ten Depraved Presidential Elections”).
Fellow Substacker and longtime, progressive-leaning researcher Josh Mitteldorf has tracked the dubious nature of elections for at least as far back as the emergence of widespread computerized voting more than 20 years ago (“Electronic Election Theft in America”).
And the issue isn’t only with national governments; I’ve written previously about the fallacy of thinking that “local control” somehow turns violence into virtue.
Don’t waste your vote!
There’s no avoiding the elephant (and donkey) in the room. The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes is merely the latest iteration of the scam that government is necessary and good, and that majority rule makes it even better.
And no matter how many Marduk-worshiping clergy tell me that it’s my Christian duty, there’s simply no such thing as a Christian call to endorse or willingly participate in monopoly-violence institutions. In fact, Jesus and the Early Church are explicitly against the dressed-up violence practiced by all regimes (I wrote a book about it).
So, this year, don’t waste your vote by casting a ballot; the institution of government will remain abysmally low-IQ and low-ethics, no matter who occupies its offices.
Instead, walk away.
Walk away from choosing a side.
Walk away from euphemisms about what “politics” really is.
Walk away from the entire religion of government and the dull, shallow, meme-level morass in which it operates.
Walk away from being a compliant, good citizen.
Walk toward being a good neighbor.
Make your voice heard …
… by sharing your thoughts in the Comments section!
When was the last time you voted? What convinced you to stop?
Are you a former government official? What convinced you to stop?
Click on any of the links to other articles and sites? Which ones, and what do you think of them?
Anything else you’d like to talk about from today’s topics?
Let me know …
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Find me on X: https://x.com/GoodNeighBadCit
Very well said. You will be interested in the conversation I have with Bob Murphy about voting. It drops tomorrow (Halloween, 2024! Spooky!). https://youtu.be/SdKGkRpUgjw