No, I’m not voting.
Sometimes you have to let the righteous anger run through you. Instead of seething in silence or punching a pillow, you can write your therapy. I’m doing that here.
If I offend anybody, I hope you’ll forgive me in time. Because I will almost certainly have to forgive you on November 9th.
I want to tell you, honestly, that you are worshiping false gods in a revival tent that comes around every four years. And that vote you’re sticking in the ballot box? It is as good as a crumpled up fiver in the collection plate of a sick religion.
I’m not just talking about that venal woman and her coterie of corrupt handmaidens. I’m not just talking about that boorish reality show star. I’m talking about the system itself.
There is no salvation in any of this. You cannot nourish your spirit by voting.
After the great wheel of power makes another grinding turn, remind your loved ones that none of this has made any of them a better person.
You are just as bad as you were before. In fact, you are worse because of it.
You see, it makes people desperate to believe lies. It makes people spiteful towards their neighbors. It gives us the illusion that we’re better, smarter, more upright people than we really are. And it gives people the idea that it’s okay to first outsource their idea of charity and the right and the good — and then worse — have people in Washington shove it down the throats of the rest of us.
If you have to use intellectual gymnastics to rationalize a system that is really designed for rival gangs to exploit each other… well, just think of what that must be doing to your soul.
Politics is rotting us from the inside out.
Do you want to help your neighbor? Then go help your neighbor. Do you want to solve a social problem? Get to building, or coding, or serving, or innovating, or whatever. Because when people work together, really together — like ants or bees — we can get amazing things done.
But this — this apparatus you think is good — only gives you permission to outsource your civic and moral responsibilities to the soulless functionaries who teem in distant capitals, feeding on largesse that could be going to better causes. They crusade to raid. They operate the circumlocution office. And they are not our friends.
So what does that make voters but dupes? Handmaiden to power? Sheep. Lemmings. Congregants in a snake handlers’ church.
Worse than that, behind the spectacle — pick your metaphor, circus or revival tent — there is violence. You think you can legitimize it with terms like “democracy” and “justice” and “public good.” But you cannot. Because for this whole thing to work there are well-paid officials in charge of jails and men with guns. And they are not there to serve you or me. They serve power.
Go out and vote this election, but if you do you are becoming better at lying to yourself. And if you still can’t see that it’s all one big charade designed to put team sports out in front of an immense system of graft — then you are a fool. And fools deserve to be laughed at.
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage,” said H.L. Mencken. I’m sorry, voter. If I don’t laugh at you, I’ll cry for myself.
The circus tent is getting bigger. I can see the monkeys howling and hurling feces like never before.
A year ago at this time, I wrote:
“Watching it all unfold can seem like watching a reality show. We can get sucked in, trading barbs on social media and watching the horse race with a bucketful of popcorn and a vague look of disgust. Or we can at least acknowledge the cage. If we succumb to the tribal tendencies, the bumper-sticker rationales, and the “I Voted” rectitude, we will help perpetuate the whole charade. Each dangling chad will be a vote of complicity in this monstrous thing that has grown upon the backs of the people (and that they paradoxically seem to welcome). Or we can be revolutionaries again. We can rattle the cage. A million little acts of civil disobedience here and there can add up fast. At the very least, we can call this thing what it is: A show. An illusion. A circus.”
I stand by this. Only I want to add a little something extra.
In my heart, I want to burn it all down. Not out of some adolescent rage or utopian fantasy. Because I have found a way to stare into this thing — to see it down to its rotten bowels. Still, I’m afraid if I stare too long, I’ll realize one day I’m looking into a mirror.
Max Borders — a Charlotte native now living in Austin, Texas — is director of idea accounts and creative development for Emergent Order and formerly editor of the Freeman director of content for the Foundation for Economic Education.