We as a nation suffer from collective amnesia. Every presidential election is declared to be the most important. Every election will make or break our republic. Every election threatens to bring about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, break the seventh seal, destroy the economy, drive out the job and dispossess the middle class.
Inevitably, the election ends. The ballots are counted. A winner is declared and half the country loses its mind.
After a few weeks everyone calms down and logs off Twitter (which I refuse to call X). Life goes back to normal and everyone forgets that the world almost ended. Elections are a fickle thing, and despite what we would like to believe, they go far beyond simply representing the will of the people. This applies to both Presidential and Congressional elections.
We are taught early on that we as citizens have certain civic duties. For our government to function properly we must obey the law, attend jury duty and most importantly, vote.
The idea behind democracy is that a society where common people choose the leaders is more fair and equitable than a society where they can’t. Fundamentally, if people can decide who is in charge they will elect rulers who share their interests. What happens when your republic has been so corrupted by the influence of the wealthy elite that they are able to prevent honest and popular leaders from being included?
Unfortunately, that’s where we are, and the data on voter turn out shows that people, especially young people, are beginning to understand this.
According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), youth turnout for the 2022 midterms was very inconsistent. The states with the highest youth turnout were Michigan, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon, all of which had turn out rates of 36% or higher. The states with the lowest youth turnout were West Virginia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Indiana and Alabama with turnout rates below 20%.
These numbers are concerning. The knee jerk reaction is to blame young people for not caring enough about politics but I think it’s something different.
I think the reason for low voter turnout is that there are no candidates that represent the interests of young people. The low level of participation that has characterized US politics is the fault of the political system failing to put forward candidates that organically attract attention from voters.
According to Gallup, only 19% of Americans approve of Congress. Theoretically, it should be hard to maintain a representative body with a 19% approval rating. However, Congressional candidates rarely represent the interests of the American people.
It seems futile to change because we have no real options. All people can do about it is vote for a candidate they dislike slightly less than the other.
I want to compare the Trump and Biden administrations. Donald Trump gets elected on the promise of finishing a border wall. He wins and it’s still unfinished. Joe Biden gets elected on the promise of rolling back Trump era policies, including border policy. He wins and only kind of does that.
“In absolute terms, the Biden DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is removing 3.5 times as many people per month as the Trump DHS did.” reported The Cato Institute.
During the first two years of the Trump Administration, the DHS made 1.4 million arrests and deported 47% of them. In the first two years of the Biden Administration, the DHS arrested over 5 million people and deported 51% of them.
If elected, this policy will be continued by Kamala Harris. According to Vox, she recently gave her support to a bill that would allocate $20 billion towards border security including wall construction.
Based on her performance at the Democratic National Convention, Harris is just like her predecessors. She wants to expand border security, dump more money into the American war machine, increase the power of unelected government agencies and officials and further crack down on “anti-American” dissent such as pro-Palestinian ideology.
“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews,” said Harris in a recent statement referring to pro-Palestinian protestors and dissenters.
Pro-Palestinian protestors do not want to kill Jewish people. They are simply opposed to the US financially supporting Israel. Since Oct 7 Israel used US support to directly slaughter over 40,000 people. It has also caused the indirect deaths of almost 200,000 people according to the medical journal The Lancet.
These are all deeply unpopular policies. A recent study by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that “young Americans support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza by a 5-1 margin. No major subgroup of voters opposes such action.”
The majority of Americans are not bloodthirsty warmongers but our representatives don’t care. They are too busy lining their pockets with war-profiteer money. Like Biden and Trump, Harris is one of the many faces of a rogue government that has renounced its duties towards its citizens.
A Harris Administration would continue the legacy of wholesale murder and destruction that has defined American politics since the the landing of the Mayflower. Those who demand participation in this system as it currently stands are demanding a compromise with evil. Evil cannot be compromised with. It can only be annihilated.
We live in a world where the law is a veil that hides tyranny. It was Thomas Jefferson who said that when tyranny becomes law, resistance becomes duty. Have you done your duty?
By voting for them, you are giving their crimes your stamp of approval. They won’t stop if they know you will vote for them no matter what. The best part is that this requires no effort on your end. Stay home on election day and do your civic duty; don’t vote.