So What’s Your Problem With Voting, Mike?

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“If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain” is the clichéd response that touches the broader thinking regarding most of my articles about democracy.

“Your vote is your power,” I’m assured. “This is the one thing resembling your voice baked into the entire system,” I’m assured.

For some people, this is true. For most, it is not. Voting gives people the illusion of control. It allows the voter a sense of calm in an otherwise savage hurricane.

But it’s all smoke and mirrors. History has proven this time and again. The voice of the people is so decidedly meek that they’re constantly asking for safeguards to dampen their megaphones.

Because the voter cannot be trusted to remove bad politicians on their own, the outcry for term limits and age limits has never been quite as loud as it is today.

And even when one dies in office like Lindsey Graham, a universally vilified caricature, he is replaced by his sister. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. George Wallace got around term limits by inserting his wife Lurleen in his place as governor of Alabama.

“But every now and then a surprise candidate is elected,” you might say. Sure, Ron Paul was a good candidate, and they redrew his district so that he couldn’t stay in office.

They spent millions of dollars to make sure Thomas Massie lost his primary in Kentucky.

The DNC just flat out refused to allow Bernie Sanders to have their party’s presidential nomination at all.

Of course, Trump won as an outsider, in his second term, running on a message of transparency, law and order, and no new wars.

He immediately broke all of those promises and became one of the most establishment-friendly presidents in history.

How can anyone look at the system and think a voter is flexing any type of muscle at all?

Many people who worship the electoral process don’t even understand the system they’re voting in, much less the candidates they’re voting for or what that candidate for that specific office can even accomplish. They were just indoctrinated to rock the vote and then follow a charming smile or attractive slogan into a box and call it a civic duty accomplished until next time.

Even if voting worked the way the educated, washed-in-the-blood-of-the-state citizen believes, the single action of educating 10 other voters on the process, system, and candidates would still be far more impactful than actually pulling the proverbial lever.

I said even if. I don’t believe it does. The only people who want to run the lives of other people are depraved psychopaths.

The positions will always attract the most dangerous elements of society: accomplished liars with wealth, power, and practical immunity in their grasps. They are mostly only talented at this particular occupation… convincing you to vote for them to run your lives.

I don’t care if you vote. Mine isn’t a call on people to not vote… though removing support for an illegitimate system would speak much louder than electing this or that surprise upstart…

I am more concerned with removing the delusion that this ritual is meaningful. If the pretense is removed and you still choose to walk behind the curtain, it’s of no consequence to me.

If that’s what you want to do, it’s fine. Vote. Just understand that the significance and sense of fulfilled duty and civic nobility you attach to it is a lie. You can vote if you want, but you shouldn’t substitute that for everyday human action if you consider yourself as someone who cares about the liberty movement in general or individual liberty at all.

I mean, it depends on what change you want, but if you want what I want, you vote with your actions, wallet, and feet.

Opting out of the system to the degree that is practical will make a much larger statement than casting a vote.

Serving on juries and nullifying victimless crimes would change the system faster than any politician ever could.

Using cash and barter “black/gray” market systems when practical. We build the communities we want via the relationships we nourish, not by electing the sycophant whose ambition is to control us.

Personally, I write. I make videos. I design t-shirts and merchandise aimed at getting the conversation started. I believe once that happens and people truly understand, then that light can never be darkened.

I raise beef and pork and try to connect with other people who are looking for an alternative to the system. I’ll homeschool. And on and on…

These actions do far more to achieve what I want than a lifetime of voting.

“So you’re telling me voting makes no difference, but how do you expect things to change if no one votes their conscience?”

By living it.

WEAR THE REVOLUTION

Read next: Blood & Treasure: The Peaceful Presidents · If They Win the Midterms, You Lose · Voting Is Stockholm Syndrome