So, I thought I was done with election commentary but I have now endured through more than enough posts and comments by folks who are expressing their anger at the election results by effectively blaming generic non-voters for bringing about the end of the world and other such calamities.
Ok, I get it. Last night didn’t look very good. You are angry, frustrated, scared, pissed off. But before you lay the blame on those who didn’t vote let me propose some blame candidates who I think should be given (much) higher priority for how things turned out:
- The Koch Brothers.
- Supreme Court Judges Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy who unleashed Citizens United and unlimited corporate money upon us.
- Citizens United and other such groups who keep raising and spending untold millions of dollars to shape election outcomes
- Ongoing voter suppression efforts such as voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, etc that make it harder or impossible for some people to vote
- Mass media outlets that bombard people with misinformation, disinformation or just plainly no information at all.
- Media personalities who get famous and wealthy by fear-mongering and appealing to base emotions while lying and scapegoating
- Broader social and political forces which promote a sense of alienation, disempowerment and disconnection from the political process
- Candidates and campaign managers and the shitty campaigns that some of them run
- The people who actually voted against your candidate or issue
- ISIS and Ebola. Oh, wait, no, they are not really to blame for any of this
- The Koch Brothers (there are two of them I don’t won’t one of them to feel left out)
- Add your own here (I am quite sure I am forgetting some)
My point here is not that people don’t bear responsibility for their individual actions and choices, but that there are some really large forces out there which wield a tremendous amount of power. If you truly believe that individual citizens hold as much power as the Koch Brothers and Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity and their ilk then you need to do a little bit more reading and thinking about why things are the way they are. If you really think that all we need to do is get more people to vote and then everything will be fine then you should seriously ponder more the nature of power and how it is exercised.
Again, I get it. You are angry, frustrated, scared, pissed off. So am I. But blaming anonymous citizens for what they might not have done is not going to get us very far (and definitely not in the direction we want and need to go). So let’s stop with the throwing blame at others and maybe start talking with each other. And listening. And then let’s work to figure out how we are going to get ourselves out of this mess and build, for ourselves, the world we want and deserve. And no, we can’t just find some better candidate and vote for them to do it. This is our world and our responsibility. We don’t get to take a pass on this.
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