For everyone who thinks voting doesn’t matter I’ve got two words for you: legal weed. Okay, shut the fuck up now. Thank you. My state is currently not arresting people for up to an ounce of marijuana and it will soon be sold in stores, which is the greatest victory of the people thusfar in the drug war. Guess how that happened? One, some determined folks got it on the ballot and two, we voted for it. For the record, it wasn’t even close. Why am I bringing this up? For the most part I try and avoid politics in my writing (outside of the drug war) because I tend to think it takes away from a spiritual message that should be applicable to anyone regardless of political affiliation (man are people divided on politics in this country). But I just voted the other day and once again, had to endure a bunch of commentary from idiots on the internets about how “it doesn’t matter who you vote for man”. Sometimes this idiocy comes from talentless Hollywood millionaires who espouse socialism but technically only spend like 1% of their income on actually helping anyone.
I think the absolute stupidest argument I hear against voting is that somehow failing to do so is a protest. I love how people say this publicly but then further can’t at all articulate what they mean. It’s just a hard pose by closet tough guys who think they know something that greedy rich people don’t. I sort of think it’s the other way around. Let’s evaluate this, by doing something that nearly every young person does (not voting), you’re protesting. That would seem to me like conformity merged with laziness and let me sum up the message you’re sending with your brilliant anti-protest: hey, evil billionaires and psycho religious people, please do whatever you want with my tax dollars. That’s sort of the problem with not voting, there’s some black hearted motherfuckers that get really into it and spend a crapton of cash and energy manipulating vulnerable whack jobs to do their bidding. When you don’t vote, those robots are voting for you. If you were going to tell me that you found a way to not pay taxes or give any of your money to large corporations, I’d be all, wow, that certainly is a protest, but you do give these people your money and you apparently don’t care what they do with it. “But voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil man.” Ummm, I just voted and 70% of the things I voted for had nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. They were initiatives. The GMO labeling thing I voted for lost by the way. You see, you’re so fucking ignorant you don’t even know that voting happens in non-presidential elections involving non-partisan issues like say, legal weed. So, because partisan politics are fucked, I shouldn’t have voted for the GMO labeling bill? These are the same people who are posting constant “Mosanto is Satan” stuff on Twitter (follow me). It’s insane.
And why is it so insane? Because we de-regulated the media. You see, back before 1987, a propaganda station like the Fox News network would have been illegal essentially. Throughout the last 30 some odd years, our government officials have been paid quite handsomely to continually get rid of laws that we initially put in place to prevent exactly what’s happening now, which is a society that is so utterly clueless as to what’s going on politically that they think not voting is some kind of a protest or even worse and more pertinent, passionately voting against their own interests. Take a look at this.
I’d say that’s pretty much all you need to know, but it’s even worse. There used to be what’s called a Fairness Doctrine which in a nutshell meant that you had to present controversial issues of public interest on the news and present both sides of them. That used to be a law. One that died in a calculated hit back in the 80’s and yep, we’re all stupider because of it. The telecommunications act in the 96 was the freaking death knell of an informed society. This affects everything, the entire consciousness of our nation. You know how many articles I’ve read about the how the music business is fucked that conveniently don’t bother to mention that all the major labels and radio are now owned by six corporations? Yeah, that has more to do with the crap they’re pushing than digital music. Any bands with messages that run counter to the daemonic profit margins of those companies probably aren’t going to get through to Joe Sixpack, which is why we get bling rap, boring indie, and American Idol pop bullshit. What do these genres have in common? They all inject a subtle subconscious message of obedient consumerism into the minds of the masses which might not be the greatest for the short term profit margins of the labels necessarily, but serves the larger agenda of their corporate overlords. It’s all tied together. Hell, half of the major indies are now essentially owned by the exact same parent companies. Same shit with Hollywood. Why do you think all we get is popcorn violence? Fuels the war machine. How many articles have I read about how the millennials are a bunch of vapid twats with a deluded sense of entitlement? Tons (and sorry, I used to think this was nonsense until I started working with them and saw it firsthand. My wife works in education, yeah, it is in fact a problem, albeit not an unsolvable one). You know what none of these articles mention? We programmed them to be that way. We wanted mindless consumers, that’s what we got. It’s a consequence of media de-regulation. There wasn’t nearly as much of this wealth worship nonsense in the early 90′s. You know why this never comes up? BECAUSE THAT WOULD REQUIRE THE MEDIA CALLING BULLSHIT ON THEMSELVES. You see how genius this all is?
When we went to war with Iraq, it had the support of the majority of Americans. You know why? Because the majority of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. The corporate media never bothered to tell them that this wasn’t even remotely true, and so we started a for profit war. No one would have supported that war if they knew it had nothing to do with 9/11. Absolutely no one. This is how dangerous a de-regulated media can be. And so with that in mind, I’m going to offer up a few political micro-rants I don’t see anyone talking about and then shut the fuck up about politics and get back to my regularly scheduled “I talk to planets with my penis” programming next time around (which is always running on Facebook, friend me). First off.
Occupy Wall Street Got Beaten Down By The Cops
I love how I constantly see mocking articles regarding the failure of Occupy Wall Street where no one points out the glaringly obvious: Occupy Wall Street didn’t fail, it was crushed. That’s right, cops showed up, beat people the fuck down and threw them in jail. A lot of these cops in New York were literally funded by Wall Street. That’s sort of why the movement fizzled, much like the hippie protest movements of the 60’s. The hippie’s acid lifestyle was made illegal, their organizations were infiltrated by intelligence personnel, and their leaders were thrown in prison. Occupy wasn’t allowed to occupy anywhere public anymore legally, which sort of killed it. Why do I mention this? Well, because Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party were initiated around the same time (Occupy was sort of a reaction to the Tea Party actually) and while one managed to eventually shut down the government, the other did basically nothing other than make a few protesters feel like they were taking a stand against something for a brief period, which is all traditional protesting ever accomplishes in this day and age.
You know what’s funny? I played an Occupy Wall Street benefit show years back when that was in full force. I was the only musician on stage that encouraged people to get out and vote the following week and most of the crowd looked at me like I was nuts. Sort of why it turned out to be a non-factor. The Tea Party’s political strategy was ALL about manipulating the vote. It was a bunch of billionaires deciding they could use the racism they knew was boiling beneath the surface in hickville due to there being a black president for the first time, and use that energy to get poor people to vote against their own self interests. They quite calculatedly found vulnerable Democratic seats in the House and Senate and pumped tons of cash into those elections to get their people in. Because of that, we have the worst congress in history. One movement was devised by poor people who didn’t bother with the vote, the other was run by rich people who did nothing but manipulate the vote. If there’s another Occupy-esque movement that comes along, learn a few things from the Tea Party. One, focus pretty damn intently on getting people to vote and two, be run by rich people who don’t mind spending their money calculatedly manipulating elections.
There is in Fact a Difference Between Democrats and Republicans
One of the more depressing things about looking at comments sections on sites that have political content involves watching kids who don’t even really remember the Bush administration saying things like: “Get a brain moran, Obama is worse than president Bush ever was.” Yeah, no, he’s not. George W. Bush was the worst president in American history and possibly one of the worst leaders in world history. Period, end of story, no debate. The only one dumb enough to start a war and simultaneously slash taxes. Obama is a mediocre president. They’re all involved with unspeakably heinous shit. This is the problem with a de-regulated media. People these days not only don’t remember history, they don’t even remember the last ten years of history. If you don’t think W was the worst president ever, then ask yourself a question, why wasn’t he even invited to the Republican National Convention in 2012? Yeah, because he sucked so bad even the Republicans don’t want to be associated with him.
Regardless of your feelings about partisan politics, there’s something that needs to be said here. Being a president involves things like giving speeches, doing interviews, meeting with foreign leaders, etc. Obama is 1000% better at performing these basic functions of the job than Bush was. Bush was an inarticulate halfwit. Not only was he an inarticulate halfwit, he was an inarticulate nepotism halfwit. Those are the worst kind by the way. Having that dude as the leader of our country was a supreme embarrassment to anyone with even a modicum of linguistic intelligence. As much as I don’t agree with a ton of Obama’s hypocrisy, I must confess that the guy is one hell of a public speaker and I’m consistently impressed with how he manages to not put his foot in his mouth. During the entire last presidential campaign the only “gotcha moment” the Republicans had on the guy was the whole “you didn’t build that” thing, which wasn’t even much of a slip up. Bush said dumb shit every fucking day. Because of this, he was an enormo PR disaster for our country.
Which would be another thing. The entire world hates Republicans. The media should be explaining that to people but they don’t. Because of their inarticulate war mongering in the 2000’s, the whole planet is rooting for us to never have a Republican president ever again. This is fact. Hell, they gave Obama a freaking Nobel Prize as basically a way to tell Americans, Jesus Christ thank you so much for not voting for McCain. You can be a hard ass and say, fuck the rest of the world, but yeah, that’s going to have a pretty strong effect on things like the economy now, isn’t it? The dollar tanked under Bush. Voting for a Republican president after Bush is like giving a middle finger to the entire rest of the world, which is incredibly stupid as we’re becoming increasingly interconnected.
This whole both-parties-are-the-same nonsense hits me particularly hard because I didn’t give a crap about politics until 1999 or so. You know what got me interested? Listening to a speech by Ralph Nader that my friend encouraged me to go to. His entire platform was based on the idea that both parties were identical. It was an incredibly pertinent message about the corporatization of our political process. I voted for him. The problem is that for the next 8 years we found out exactly how wrong he was about that. The Republicans are way more tied to conservative religious and military interests. There’s a difference between a guy who killed civil liberties, cut taxes on the rich, and doubled the size of the war machine by lying about weapons of mass destruction and the guy who nationalized healthcare. The difference is in who’s controlling them. Obama’s owned by Wall Street (hella creepy) and guess what, Wall Street’s doing better than ever. Shocking. This is fucking horrifying and I acknowledge that, but I have not once heard a Democrat mention going after things like women’s rights, gay people, labor, expanding the war machine, or cutting taxes for the wealthy even further. Romney openly talked about wanting to slash social services in favor of increased military spending…during the debates. He then essentially slagged Obama for not attacking Iran. Do you want a war with Iran? Then you probably shouldn’t vote Republican and you should probably vote. I’m not even going to get into drugs (Republicans hate legal weed) or pornography (Republicans openly want to wage a war on pornography). There’s a reason Bill Hicks and Robert Anton Wilson spent half their time taunting them.Yeah, sorry, while both are embarrassingly owned by corporation interests, there is in fact a big difference. Ralph Nader unintentionally taught me that, which brings me to my next point.
Why on Earth Do We Still Have An Electoral College?
Al Gore wouldn’t have started the war in Iraq, wouldn’t have sponsored the Patriot Act, and most certainly wouldn’t have cut taxes on the wealthy. This is pertinent because he got the majority of the vote in 2000. I say that I didn’t give a shit about politics before Ralph Nader, but it was really watching the rigged election in 2000 that made me think I should start paying attention. I can’t believe people still talk about JFK’s assassination but somehow the rather blatant throwing of a presidential election is a minor historical detail that we’ve all conveniently forgotten. No one’s even going to deny that it happened. It was right out in the open. Thousands of black people who vote 92% Democrat were turned away from the polls. The person who decided to send the decision to the Supreme Court was W’s Florida campaign manager. The supreme court was in his pocket. Thousands of votes in a primarily Jewish district went to a neo-nazi somehow and even he said he didn’t believe those people voted for him.
All in all, the best margin they could rig to make Bush a winner in Florida was a couple hundred votes and that’s what lead to the military takeover of our country that was his administration. In other displays of mind blowing stupidity, I’ve actually seen 9/11 conspiracy people take the position that voting doesn’t matter. Ermmm, the entire cornerstone in your theory is that they had to get an insanely pro-military president into office in 2000 for them to push through the multiple theater wars they wanted. That’s sort of why they rigged it. As it stands, in a presidential election, my vote in the state of Washington now means exactly nothing. Democrats will win here always. If I would have stayed in Ohio (or lived in any swing state), my vote for the president would mean a thousand times more than it currently does. That…..is fucking retarded, but I still fill out my ballot and vote for local stuff, as everyone should. Why there has been no effort to reform the electoral college after 2000 is a complete mystery to me. That should have been priority number freaking one.
Politics are Really Fucking Boring
This is the biggest problem with politics and why it’s so hard to get young people interested in things like voting. It’s…just…so…boring. You know how boring politics are? Even when you fictionalize them in movies like Lincoln and shows like House of Cards, they still put me to sleep. Seriously, I was bored to tears by both of those. Oh wow, you totally made that backroom deal to secure that Senator’s vote all last minute like. Jesus, what a snore factory. My first introduction to this reality was during my collegiate tenure at Ohio State. I knew several people who were involved with local government there, and as a result had some direct ties to the dude who ended up being our class president. He was such a bland fucking dork it was unreal and I’m sure now has more political clout than I ever will. These are the people who get into politics. If we can’t get people who aren’t lawyers and sterile businessmen into politics, we’re fucked. The fact that I would actually vote for a Jessie Ventura/Howard Stern ticket is beyond surreal and shameful. Having someone the kids actually respect as a candidate would in fact be the first step in getting them out to the polls. They thought they had hope in Obama the poor fools.
Everything Anyone in The Tea Party Says Should Have An “In Favor of Military Spending” Asterisk Attached to It
As a spiritual person, the Tea Party is the most infuriating thing that’s happened to politics since our response to 9/11. Here’s why:
On top of that, according to some estimates, we now spend 53 cents of every one of our tax dollars on the military in some way or another. It’s been the biggest growth sector and nearly doubled in size under Bush. What are these Tea Party rubes supposedly pissed about? Yeah, big government. Ummm, but not the biggest growth section of our government? They’re all for that. If we didn’t de-regulate the media, every headline regarding the shut down would have read something like: Tea Partiers Shut Down Government Over 3.4% of the Budget. Seriously, these guys shut down the entire government over 3.4 cents on the dollar, while as high as 53 cents are going to the military. Roughly none of them want to scale back the war machine, which means their entire message breaks down to: we should spend our tax dollars on wars overseas rather than helping people in need. Even when we do that the cash should go to weapons manufacturers rather than the soldiers. It’s completely oppositional to the teachings of Christ which is sort of why I’m writing this. We just cut food stamps rather than scaling back arms funding significantly. Fucking food stamps. Way back in the day when I was a Christian and went to church I spent multiple afternoons helping feed the needy at soup kitchens at the encouragement of my pastor. Now we’re cutting food stamps in favor of weapons under the guise of Christianity. Operation hell on earth if you ask me. Again, this isn’t something the Democrats are pushing for, sorry. I hate them too, but they haven’t achieved that level of absurd spiritual corruption as of yet. Just a reminder to all you Tea Party asstards, you will have to answer for these things when you die. It is what I’ve been shown. Life is a test and you failed. Have fun knowing exactly what it’s like to watch your family starve, and furthermore, rot in hell you heartless pricks. The fact that you did this in the name of Christ will make things particularly brutal on you, I promise.
(I intentionally avoid talking about politics on Facebook, where I write about magick. Twitter is also a thing that I do)
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