Why I Didn’t Vote

Dear Barack Obama,

I didn’t vote for you today. I didn’t vote for John McCain. I didn’t vote for anyone. Well, that’s not entirely true, I exercised my right not to vote. It’s not because I’m a bitter, disenfranchised person who couldn’t be bothered. It’s because I failed to believe that anyone running for president of the most powerful country in the world, could really, believable, stand for change.

Mr. Obama, you have centered your campaign around the working class people of America. You have sworn to protect jobs. What you have failed to mention are all the jobs that do not deserve to be protected. I don’t want someone who protects the right of the auto industry worker. I want someone who says that we will not produce another automobile unless it is 100% petroleum free and made of materials that do not come from under the feet of poor indegenous people in countries most Americans can’t find on a map (America is not really known for its raw steel production, you know?).

I don’t want someone to protect loggers and fishermen. I want someone who says that logging and fishing are destructive and archaic practices which are choking the planet to death and do not deserve our creedence any longer. I don’t want someone to talk about “sustainable development” I want someone who recognizes that there is nothing “sustainable” about increasing development on this finite planet. I want you to say that we must not tear down old buildings just to build new ones in the name of “progress”. I want you to say that the infiltration of suburban life and theory is destroying us as people and members of a communal species.

I want someone who says you cannot take without giving. I want someone who recognizes that a field of homogenous evergreen trees is not the same as a raw forest. I want someone who knows that money is not the equivalent of clean water. The idea that we make corporations pay for pollution in dollars is similar to accepting murder and rape so long as the offenders apologize for each action.

I don’t want someone to protect capitalism. I want someone who recognizes that the basic tenets of capitalism are fundamentally flawed. I want someone who understands that our current economic paradigm is dependent on the idea of unmitigated growth – a premise which is inherently unsustainable. I want someone who recognizes that corporations are dangerous and destructive entities which need to be entirely dismantled if we are to see a change in some of our biggest problems. I want you to say that an entity whose sole purpose is to make money above all else, has been an exclusively corrosive influence on our lives.

Mr. Obama, I want someone who recognizes that the destruction of our planet, the unprecedented commodification of humans, animals, and the earth is leading to our demise, and that the answer does not lie in industry. We cannot innovate our way out of the problems we have created by objectifying and exploiting the resources on which we depend. And we cannot continue our current rate of growth and consumption without exploitation. The answer will lie in a complete change of paradigm, not in a new lightbulb, not in an energy credit, but in a complete change in the way we view “necessity” “product” and “consumption”.

I want someone who fundamentally understands that water does not come from a faucet, that food does not come from a grocery store, and that power does not come from an outlet. Only after you have realized that it is our objectification of the natural world that is killing us, can you begin to think about what change looks like.

I want you to recognize the heirarchy that exists and work on abolishing it. In this heirarchy, the wealthy exist at the top and the poor at the bottom. When violence flows down the heirarchy it is called “collateral damage” “wage labor” and “defense”. When violence flows up the heirarchy, it is called “violence” and “terrorism”. I want you not to pay lip service to equality, but to truly live it. If you continue to protect human interests in exploiting each other and the natural world by encouraging global systems of economics and consumption, you cannot truly understand injustice.

I realize that one of the issues at stake in this particular election is my right to control my own reproductive system. What you don’t seem to understand is how horrifying it is that a group of people was ever given the power to take what should be a fundamental reality like breathing, and turn it into a “right” which could be either granted or taken depending on the political climate. I don’t want someone who says he will protect my right to choose, I want someone who says that this is not an issue to be debated. I want it to be taken off the table. I want you to say you will not participate in a system which put that issue on the table in the first place.

I don’t want someone who claims to love their dog but has done nothing to stop the slaughter of animals whose emotional richness and personal integrity are no different from our own, and who deserve our protection. I don’t want someone to look at animal testing (one of the great failures of modern medicine) and see progress. I want you to stand up and say that we are smart enough to create alternatives, and not back down until the industry has changed. I want someone to look at all living creatures as sentient beings who deserve respect, comfort, and reverence. They are not mere products that can be bandied about in the marketplace. They are the subject of a life, just as we all are.

To be clear, I don’t expect that the world will revert to a system of villages and communities (despite living nearly all of our history in such a way), but at the very least, I don’t want it to be made impossible for other people to do so. I want someone who protects the choice to abstain from participating in a political system as much as they protect the right for that system to exist.

What I want is the recognition that voting is not a personal tool, but a blindfold which is made to grant a false sense of power and responsibility to people who have been fundamentally stripped of their true voice. I don’t want to vote, I want a system which acknowledges that we should not have to ask for certain rights and protections. I want you to change the people that our current society has forced us to become. I want you to remove exploitation, heirarchy and privelege in all areas of our lives.

The American people have been stripped of their voice. The voice that says it is absurd to have to pay money just to exist on the planet. The voice that wonders why it is illigal to live on the earth without purchasing the spot on which you stand. The voice that says “I don’t want to sell myself to a company just to make money to live” The voice that says ”My time here is priceless and is not for sale” I want you to protect our birth given right to live without these civilizational crutches instead of burdening us with more responsibility. Responsibility disguised as duty and patriotism and honor, but really only serve to remove us from our true selves as members of a species who live on the earth and need nothing but the freedom to live, in order to survive and prosper. I don’t want you to speak for me. I want my voice back.

~ by Reno on November 4, 2008.