Politics Are a Silly Thing for a Family to Fight Over
Alright, here we go – everywhere I go, people wanna know, “Will Justin be voting this year?”
By far my most-commented-on social media post (which, admittedly, is not saying a lot for I do not get all that much engagement a function, my little brother claims, of just posting stuff that’s only funny to me…to which I reply, if it’s not funny to me what’s the point? I’m also a BIG fan of LONG parenthetical references BTW…)
Never mind why it’s so important to Instagram and Facebook, other social medias and social media warrior wannabees that I vote???
When YouPorn is asking me if I’m registered to vote in my state…I mean, come on.
Ok, that last one was made-up, but it might be the most effective/underutilized SM political advertising platform…course, the image of either candidate before I..err, I mean a user, uses that one…
Eeeeeeeeww.
Michael Pollan once wrote something to the effect of, “If it needs an advertisement, you don’t need it.”
Political advertising isn’t even clever – it’s just one little kid calling another a ‘liar’ in a hundred different ways.
Have you heard about Facebook’s new political ad policy? This passage from CNBC pretty much sums it up:
So, as long as they get it scheduled before the 27th, they can still tweak and maintain it…
Really cracking down there, Facebook.
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I do appreciate this time of year, though, for the invitation to re-examine what politics and democracy even mean in the current context.
I was, after all and once upon a time in a galaxy far far away kinda way, a Poly-Sci major, International Studies M.A., and a door-to-door, get-out-the-voter…
What changed for me wasn’t just a simple disillusionment, but one borne of witnessing the orchestrations of power from behind the closed door access at one of the highest/lowest levels…namely, I was, briefly and fondly, friends with the Prime Minister of East Timor, Nobel Prize Winner Jose Ramos Horta.
Highest access, lowest level…much like my stint as a “mid-major” division 1 basketball player.
I typically choose not to vote because there’s simply no point to the effort. I acknowledge what I give up in this exchange, as well as what I gain….
I give up the right to bitch about the system that rules me.
I gain the responsibility to replace it with something more effective.
Essentially, you can vote, or…you can bitch…or, maybe it’s the opposite?
I would be most likely to vote if it meant I got to choose between some different candidates, but the really confusing thing about contemporary politics is that…no one stands for anything.
They wishy-wash about a lot, serving up judges as determiners, but the whole shadow game is one not too dissimilar to Hollywood – script-writers dominating the debate and driving discourse at every level.
The reason policy information isn’t as openly shared as the scandals is precisely because viewers wouldn’t pay as much attention to that…
Division is, weirdly, more unifying than connection…at least to the members of the same party.
When it comes right down to it, the two sides of the so-called political spectrum are as intertwined as front and back – if you peeled a layer back all you’d see is two sides of the same corrupt coin.
I do love that Kanye West is on the ballot, though…it underscores just how god-damned ridiculous this all is. No matter who you are, or how unstable, you can run for president (or win, as we’ve seen) if you just have enough money.
Continuing to play a rigged game is tantamount to giving your implicit approval to said rigged game. Even if we suspend our disbelief around this corrupt context, voting is still statistically pointless unless you reside in a handful of perennial swing states (as witnessed by the last election’s final 2.87 million meaningless votes, and, of course, 2000’s half-million meaningless ones). It is also, in today’s day and age, practically unnecessary…
The fact is the whole world no longer needs high-level, administrative bureaucrats like Presidents and Senators. For the first time in recorded human history, we have the tools of technology necessary at our disposal to enact true representative democracy…all we have to do is enroll Elon Musk in creating a secure and universally accepted log-in funnel where we can all choose what government programs to fund with our allotted tax estimates much like a GoFundme campaign…
All we have to do is log-in and say, “I want to fund 8k to the National Parks.”
If Defense doesn’t make their nut, then they make some cuts…
It’s that easy.
I think it was Russell Brand’s idea, honestly…or, someone he knows.
Lot of people don’t know this about me…I actually campaigned on behalf of John Kerry…remember him?
Or Tibet?
Or, the IRA?
Or, that pipeline up there in North Dakota…? What was the name of that, again…?
Humans have shockingly short memories.
Here’s a historical primer – politics is the history of the rich and powerful justifying their robbery and pollution of the resources of the masses by letting them vote between which scoundrel will administer the robbery itself.
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I’m grateful to come from two kinds of people – half of my kin fought in the Revolutionary War; while the other half were driven from their Native lands before, during, and after it.
I’ve enjoyed the rewards and limitations that come from both.
Politics don’t serve the just…politics just serves the rich.
The state uses the implicit threat of internal force to coerce a person out of a portion of their income on the promise that it will protect them from external threats.
Without government there would be raiders at the door, as it were…but, the fact that the citizenry of the US represents the most well-armed militia in the history of the world is not lost on any potential external threat.
Thank you for your service, Presidents of the past – it sure does not seem like an easy job. Thankless, even…but no one asked you, either…your job description is no longer relevant in our contemporary society. It’s now as useless as that of the CEO of WeWork, or YogaWorks.
Everyone in power will abuse their power simply because power corrupts.
Anything times 0 is, at the end of the day, 0.
I would be happy to get out and vote for any of the following tickets to “represent” me before I’d hold out hope for any that have come before them:
- Elon Musk and Joe Rogan
- Sheryl Swoopes and Wesley Snipes
- Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan
Will I be voting this time around? Gonna be a game time decision for me, dog…always is.
I once raced back from Texas earning myself a felonious speeding ticket just to cast a vote in the McCain v. Obama contest…the only seemingly lasting result being that I cannot travel to Texas to this day (or, Canada – but, that’s neither here nor there…or, is it?).
There’s one thing I know – there’s nothing stupider for a family to fight over than politics…
Good luck, Yogis!
JK
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Justin “Jud” Kaliszewski is the best-selling yoga teacher and renowned creator of Outlaw Yoga. Author. Artist. Adventurer. You can take his class NOW at outlawyogaclub.com and www.youtube.com/outlawyoga. Find his writing and art at www.justinkaliszewski.com and his presence all over the internet – for an outlaw, he’s shockingly easy to get ahold of.