From DC's anarchist cartoonist, Mike Flugennock:
"Dear U.S. Left: Stop Asking Me To Vote"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3852
Dear US Left:
With all due respect — I really do love ya, we've worked together and
hit the barricades and been ride-or-die n'all that, but — you've just
gotta stop this shit right now, y'all, 'cos it's the biggest waste of
time ever at this point. Seriously, for myself and all of our
comrades, I'm here to tell you, you just gotta STOP IT, brah.
Stop asking us to VOTE.
Stop asking us to play in a crooked rigged casino, to participate in a
phony "democracy" and vote in a useless "election" in which the
candidates and platforms are already decided by the Party and the
permissible issues and voices already decided by the media. Stop
asking us to drag ourselves off to participate in an empty ritual in
an empty institution which has achieved absolute zero.
Stop insulting our intelligence by asking us to participate in the
"democracy" of a nation in which the State, the Party and
Establishment institutions have at long last finally, thoroughly,
utterly and completely alienated us and then relentlessly implores us
to participate in their useless, capitalist media-controlled
"democratic" institutions. After doing their level best to beat down
and silence the dissent and outrage of billions across the nation and
the Earth, they've got the spectacular gall to try to shame, frighten,
and browbeat us into slinking back to their polls for "abortion
rights" — for affluent, professional-class American women, of course;
not the reproductive rights of working-class and poor women, nor
immigrant women, nor Afghan or Iraqi women, and for goddamn sure not
the reproductive rights of PALESTINIAN women.
After this staggering mass alienation and good old-fashioned
ideological witch hunt, the likes of the Democratic Party and MSNBC
just can't shut the hell up about "abortion rights", and their
broadcasts are wall-to-wall with the Trump Trials and the threat to
Democracy™. The more of that crap I hear, the more it disgusts and
amuses me because the more I think back, the less evidence I see that
Democracy™ has ever brought us anything approaching absolutely jack in
the way of positive, substantive change; that voting for politicians
in an "election" has ever done anything but drag our misery out
endlessly while we wait around for the politicians to fight our
struggle for us.
That "democratic" institutions in a "democratic" nation practically
break their necks to be first in line to suppress the People's voices
and cover their eyes and ears while two "democratic" nations with the
assistance of the "International Community" carry out the most horrid
industrial-strength genocide of the past century should tell us
everything we need to know about Democracy™ at this point. It's truly
gobsmacking that after six or seven months of some of the most vicious
beatdowns on dissent and public expression worldwide, the Democratic
Party — and their pals on cable TV "news" and on the US Left — still
have the nerve to come around whining and scraping and begging us to
participate in their goddamn little fake Democracy™, to vote in their
empty-ass "elections" which change absolutely nothing.
Malcolm X teaches us that "democracy is hypocrisy"; he teaches us that
every bit of positive change won for the People ANYWHERE ON EARTH was
NOT the result of "democracy", but by the People, the people who were
willing to organize and take direct action on their own behalf and do
whatever it takes to achieve what they deserve and what belongs to
them — up to and including armed force. Malcolm X teaches us this,
Lenin teaches us this, Abbie Hoffman and Audre Lorde teach us this —
hell, even George Carlin teaches us this.
"Democracy" is an impediment to change. "Democracy" is a prison, and
we need to jump the guards and bust out. At this point, it should be
abundantly clear that "revolution is the ONLY solution" isn't just a
tight, clever slogan, and it's time to cut the crap and get the hell
on with it.
Stop asking us to try to tear down the Master's house with the Master's tools.
Stop asking us to VOTE.
---------------
Associated Links:
- "Decision 2004", August 2004: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3441
- "Decision 2016", April 2016: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=1910
- "Dinnertime For Democrats", January 2017: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2145
- "It's Official: The Democrats Don't Care", July 2018:
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2571
- "Garbage In…", February 2019: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2675
- "At Last! The Left Rises!", March 2020: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2954
- "I Voted", June 2020: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3005
- "You're Helping Trump!", September 2020: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3062
- "Afghan Women's Liberation No. 2 (or, Won't Somebody Think Of The
Women?)", August 2021: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3298
- "Met Gala", September 2021: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3320
- "What is HIMARS?", June 2022: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3462
- "Bone Deep", July 2022: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3484
- "We Will Return", July 2023: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3658
- "Shaddup!", November 2023: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3732
- "Know Your Enemy", December 2023: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3747
- "Us And Them", January 2024: http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3774
- "But… What About Abortion?": February 2024 http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3788
--------
- V.I. Lenin, from Collected Works vol. 28, 1919, "'Democracy' And
Dictatorship"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/dec/23.htm
- "Marxism And Bourgeois Elections", at International Bolshevik
Tendency, Oct 2019
https://bolshevik.org/statements/ibt_20191027_marxism_bourgeois_elections.html
- Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's
House",
https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lorde_The_Masters_Tools.pdf
- "George Carlin Doesn't Vote", 1991,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk
- "You Measure A Democracy…", Abbie Hoffman, ca. 1968,
https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-interpretations/abbie-hoffman-you-measure-a-democracy-by-the-freedom-it-gives-its-dissidents-not-the-freedom-it-gives-its-assimilated-conformists
- Malcolm X, "Democracy Is Hypocrisy", 1964
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNfAFfu6VD0
- Malcolm X, "The Ballot Or The Bullet", 1964
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zLQLUpNGsc
_________________________________________________________________
Mike Flugennock, Political Cartoons: http://www.sinkers.org/stage
Mike's press kit: http://sinkers.org/stage/?page_id=2
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