Don’t Tell Me My Vote Doesn’t Matter
We all have at least one friend who believes the ruling class decides who gets selected to serve as our representatives in government. I’m here to tell you that they are full of shit and your vote absolutely matters. Get out there and VOTE!
So what is the ruling class? Beats the shit out of me. The last of the ruling class in America were slave owners. After that, you would have to delve deep into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory where globalists run the world from some secret bunker or military-style base in some far-away place, or maybe right under our noses. Not to be confused with the power elite though.
If we’re going to talk nonsense, let’s keep our jargon straight. I mean, we don’t want to look like a bunch of dumbasses here. Do we? Nah. Let’s not.
What's the difference between the ruling class and the power elite? Well, let us invoke the thinking of sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916–1962). He argued that the ruling class differs from the power elite. The latter simply refers to the small group of people with the most political power. Many of them are politicians, hired political managers and/or military leaders. The ruling class is made up of people who directly influence politics, education, and government with the use of wealth or power.
Get it? Yeah well, for the sake of this post, you don’t necessarily need to because it’s all nonsensical gibberish, albeit creative, that people spin to make a profit on YouTube and other outlets. Think Alex Jones and his mentally disturbed ravings. These guys are slick and can be very convincing.
Here’s the thing. All their evidence is circumstantial, and with that type of evidence, you can make it look however you want and be damned convincing. Humans have been pulling this shit for centuries and humans are still simple enough to fall for most of it. I’m willing to bet that most of you, myself included, believe that someone or something sinister is really out there pushing buttons and pulling on levers like the Wizard of Oz.
Speaking of, I’m pretty sure that’s where the concept of Oz came from.
Anyway. Back to reality.
Mattei Dogan (1920–2010) who studied elites in the latter part of his career suggested that because of their complexity and their heterogeneity and particularly because of the social division of work and the multiple levels of stratification, there is not, or can not be, a coherent ruling class, even if in the past there were solid examples of ruling classes as in the Russian and Ottoman Empires and the more recent totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.
If you don’t know who Mattei was, allow me to introduce you.
He was a Romanian-born French political sociologist and senior research officer emeritus of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and professor emeritus of political science of the University of California, Los Angeles. Over a period of 22 years, he also taught at UCLA, Indiana University, Yale University, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, the University of Florence, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was a foreign honorary member of the Romanian Academy from 1992, and he received the CNRS Silver medal.
He chaired the Research Committee on Political Elites of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and the Research Committee on Comparative Sociology of the International Sociological Association (ISA). He was also the founder of the Foundation Mattei Dogan that is devoted exclusively to the social sciences, and which is recognized as a non-profit organization by both the French and American governments.
In other words, he knew his shit.
Now that we’ve sorted all that. Aside from the antiquated Electoral College fiascos of the last several decades, your votes absolutely matter. In fact, even with the Electoral College in the way, if we all voted in much larger numbers I assure you we would have ended up with Al Gore instead of Dubya and Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, respectively.
Both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote nationwide but were handed the loss because of where those votes were cast. Bottom line is, when it comes to the Electoral College, Presidential candidates have to win the majority in the majority of states. Yes, I am aware that some states are worth more Electoral Votes than others, but for the sake of brevity let’s keep this moving. We’re not talking about the EC right now anyway.
“If voting didn’t matter, they wouldn’t try to stop us from doing it.” -Common
What we’re talking about is how much your vote matters. It matters a great deal. Not just in federal and state elections, but even more so in local elections.
If we really want to reform the criminal justice system among the many other social inequities, its starts at the local level. When you pay attention to the vote tallies in those elections, you see just how close those are. Some positions are won by less than 100 votes, and even more, are won by less. School boards, judges, DA’s, Sheriffs, and a host of city ordinances and measures that have a much more profound impact on your daily lives than federal elections.
Local elections are arguably the most important of them all.
Now, get out there and vote because your vote ABSOLUTELY matters.
