This Election is Already Over
Stop telling me to vote my conscience. I can’t.
At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Ted Cruz, of all people, told the country to vote with its conscience. A lot of people seem to really hate that idea — people who support Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, especially. Yet I don’t stop hearing how voting one’s conscience is the only thing we can do — regardless of how awful Trump is, Hillary Clinton is also garbage.
“Voting for Hillary Clinton will do nothing to stop imperialism, colonialism, neoliberalism, and militarism,” is the general assertion of a piece I recently read entitled “You’re Not Voting For Hillary Clinton To Protect Me,” one that is accurate and important. There’s nothing about Hillary Clinton that will stop any of those things — in fact, she’ll likely exacerbate the problems brought forth by those ideologies. She is, after all, an imperialist, colonialist, militant, neoliberal.
Some marginalized people are — legitimately— terrified of Hillary Clinton. Some of her life’s work has negatively affected them.
I’m not here to contradict that. It’s true. People who want to shove Hillary Clinton down everyone’s throat as a bitter pill seem to not understand that just because they aren’t in a bad position during a hypothetical Clinton presidency, doesn’t mean she will not put others in a bad position.
Because she will.
As black/queer activist Ashley Williams found, Hillary Clinton is condescending and hostile when confronted with damage she has done to marginalized folks.
I could write another list of everything that’s wrong with Hillary Clinton, but frankly I’m just tired of doing it. I did it through the entire primary season, hoping we’d get someone who has a conscience. Bernie Sanders isn’t perfect, but he’s at least good (name someone else in the race who is — go on, I’ll wait) as well as consistently beating Donald Trump in polls by a wide margin — meanwhile Hillary Clinton is losing at the time of this writing. It would have been the first time I’d seen an honest politician nominated to a large party’s candidacy that would provide visibility and therefore viability.
It’s the end of the road for conscience, though. That election is already over.
People with a conscience understand that voting for Trump is wrong. People with a conscience and good access to information know that voting for Hillary Clinton is wrong. Trump is worse, but they’re both garbage on some level.
The problem we now face is one of exhausted options. We did have a candidate that voting your conscience for was actually a viable path to victory (you may or may not agree with me on that, but I’m not writing to judge you), but at this point, we don’t. There is no a viable option outside of the same old terrible binary for not electing Trump. Sure, you and I know who Jill Stein is and what she’s about, at least on paper. But I’m going to say something the most fervent Bernie Sanders supporters will hate me for: I no longer even want Jill Stein as president. At all.
I had an open disdain for Bernie Sanders' stans throughout primary season. They acted in ways contrary to the ideology they were supporting — and now Jill Stein openly and actively courts the worst of Sanders' following. She hailed Brexit — a vote where reactionaries rammed through racist, reactionary nationalism — as some kind of amazing, revolutionary act (and later tried to cover her tracks on that). She plays both sides with vaccines (in her own words) and “makes it clear” she isn’t anti-vaxx while making sure they know she will listen to them and I have no patience for that kind of garbage. The problem isn’t her stance on vaccines, it’s her stance on anti-vaxxers — a voting bloc the Green Party needs to maintain because the majority of positions they hold are school boards in California. It’s as if the main criteria for Jill Stein to support something is that it is anti-establishment and that’s it. Taking on the establishment is an important element in solving today’s problems but far from the only one. I don’t want this person in charge.
With 3.2% in the national polls, we’re not really in danger of President Stein, though. The electorate wouldn’t allow it — people don’t vote for who the they don’t know. People don’t know Jill Stein. Sadly, her solution for that seems to be rounding up Bernie stans and using Twitter like a teenage Green Day fan circa American Idiot.
Oh, and Gary Johnson is a libertarian, and is therefore significantly worse than whatever annoying performative aggression Jill Stein engages in because ultimately, at least she has a good platform. The libertarian platform is a steaming pile of shit that can never be allowed to pass in the United States.
I dislike all of the people who are currently attempting to become President. They all reek with the stink of privilege and feigned concern. One is a bonafide fascist, and my biggest concern is the possibility of electing an actual fascist to lead the country I live in, but sadly the other options seem like eating vomit.
I’d rather eat vomit than poison, but I don’t really want to eat vomit.
One thing I really, truly can’t do anymore is entertain the idea that a vote for Hillary Clinton is going to help marginalized people. The eloquence and no-nonsense nature of the piece I mentioned earlier is impossible — and irresponsible — to deny. It’s the truth, and my heart broke as I read it.
Because honestly, what am I supposed to do?
I don’t think Hillary Clinton will help marginalized people. At all. Donald Trump is worse, and will intentionally fuck them over. Who’s left with them gone? Two people who won’t win — both of whom I don’t want to win anyway. Jill Stein with her SteinStans and her performative aggression and Gary Johnson with his garbage platform built on “here’s how I will fuck over poor and marginalized people.”
So you know what? I really don’t think marginalized people are marginalized by our choices in this election. They’re marginalized by this election.
Voting for any of the candidates will marginalize people. Not voting will marginalize people. Marginalized people do not have a viable choice. Voters with a conscience do not have a means of avoiding participation in the marginalization of the underprivileged or the unprivileged.
What are “Bernie or Busters” asking of me? To vote for someone who won’t win — basically giving away that vote? To vote for a ethno-nationalist fascist to heighten contradictions — because that worked so good with Bush? What are Clinton die-hards asking of me? To vote for neoliberalism — the adapting of free market policies to everything? Economic issues, social issues — the very way we adopt ideas societally (“The Marketplace of Ideas”) — is there nothing neoliberals don’t see as at least a partial meritocracy? Free Market Equality Advocacy™ is garbage. If I hear “equality in the tech industry” another time, I’m going to scream.
None of these options work for people with a conscience. You’re trying to tell me to vote for something!? For what? For whom? Everything that everyone is saying about this election is muck.
If you say there is a way to vote your conscience in this election, you’re lying to yourself and to everyone else. If you say Hillary Clinton is a good choice in a bad climate, you’re lying to yourself and to everyone else. If you’re saying Trump will heighten contradictions and “bring the revolution,” you’re lying to yourself and to everyone else. If you’re saying Jill Stein has a chance — and is somehow better than Hillary Clinton despite similarly building her campaign on snark — you’re lying to yourself and to everyone else. If you’re saying Gary Johnson is advocating a platform not rife with human rights violations, you’re lying to yourself and to everyone else.
I can’t vote my conscience. There is no means to do so. If I vote for Hillary Clinton (and I probably will to avoid fascism, whoopie…), my conscience reminds me that it’s a vote for pretty much everything that has screwed over the United States for several decades now. If I vote Donald Trump, my conscience can’t help but loudly say I’m voting for the most power-hungry, warmongering, bigoted freak that I’ve ever seen take the national stage in my life. But if I vote a third party, my conscience says “oh, hey, thanks for the vote” in a Donald Trump voice.
Don’t tell me to vote my conscience again. Don’t tell me the consequences of Trump again. Don’t tell me Hillary Clinton will somehow be worse, because she won’t, but don’t tell me how bad I screw over marginalized people by voting for her. Don’t tell me the only reason the third parties don’t win is because people don’t vote for them (it’s not). The Electoral College doesn’t work that way and your oversimplification is simply a way for you to blame someone for the two-party system that doesn’t work.
Stop telling me how your shitty candidate is the only logical choice in what can only be called “the worst Presidential election of all time.” I’ve heard it already. I’m tired of hearing it. It’s wrong. You’re wrong.
I’m screwing marginalized people over no matter what I do. I know that. That’s how this is set up; that’s how this has always been set up. That’s what “marginalized” is. Stop trying to speak for them to influence my vote. I can’t imagine them appreciating that, on account I can’t imagine an action you’re advocating that doesn’t screw them over somehow.
What matters now is figuring out what we do after November to mitigate the damage of what we’ve already done.
This election is already over. We lost.
