Yes [we do have a choice], but not through voting and the other means that those in power tell us are our only options. There’s a reason why they say around elections time, “it doesn’t matter who you vote for as long as you vote.” They say it because it’s true: it really doesn’t matter who you vote for. They want you to think that you’re making the decisions along with your fellow citizens when we aren’t doing that at all, which is why what matters is that you vote, not who you vote for.
As GOP pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz confessed while meeting with Republican governors in the fall of 2011: “I’m frightened to death” of the Occupy Movement. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” He did not say, “I’m frightened to death that people will vote for the Democrats.” He said, I’m frightened to death of this movement.
Luntz thus blurted out one of the biggest secrets in political life: the way you change political policies is by movements that influence how people think. You don’t do this through voting. You do this through impacting public opinion. And the ways of doing that are various, including participating and helping to organize protests and speaking out through your body, your voice and/or through your pen/keyboard and where you donate your time, energy and money.
The powers that be are deeply and clearly aware of this, which is why they are deathly afraid of people saying and doing things that challenge the perspective that authorities work so hard to make normative. “Here’s what is possible,” they say. “This is what must be and now, would you rather have the Republican do it or the Democrat?” Would you rather have a guy in a red tie or a guy in a blue tie deciding how much to cut from public services and how much to give to the 1%?
When we vote for candidates from either party we are not deciding whom we like better. We are legitimating what those candidates do and stand for. When and if you cast a vote for Obama you [were] saying that you are okay with what he has done – his presidential kill list, his drone attacks, his refusal to prosecute torturers, his perpetuating of torture and places like Guantanamo, his suspension of habeas corpus, due process, and the rule of law, his vengeful attacks on whistleblowers, his mass incarceration and mass deportations, his failure to address global warming, his failure to defend women’s abortion rights…
You’re saying that you endorse this because you are not refusing to delegitimate it by publicly refusing to vote in their elections charade. This is the message you are sending. Is that the message you want to send?!
The World Can’t Wait. Stop the Crimes of Our Government.
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This flyer was excerpted from “Who is Barack Obama Really?” on dennisloo.com and distributed by the World Can’t Wait San Francisco on November 5, 2014 in the Bay Area.