To Vote or Not to Vote

Never Before has it Been so Difficult

"I'm Your Puppet" - James and Bobby Purify

 

...To decide which lesser of two evils to vote for. No, it is not difficult to choose, it is difficult to actually participate in the voting process. I am going to start with an excerpt from a post I made on a friend's page, omitting the names of said friend and commentator:

"Coming from someone who is fiscally conservative in regards to military prowess/foreign aid and Austrian about the fractional reserve banking system, I agree with you (nice person with whom I engaged this discourse) that the American Dream has been destroyed. The FED got us into the mortgage bubble that destroyed the dream, and Bush/Cheney with their reckless, ignorant foreign policy nailed the coffin shut. The people, with their rampant consumerism weren't exactly innocent either when they signed their lives away to ARM loans and didn't expect to also owe a LEG, all the while living it up on their domicile being an atm machine. But Mitt has a severe disconnect with the common everyday people, who I am a part of. He has never walked in middle class shoes. My husband and I work our butts off every week, and certainly don't want people mooching on our hard-earned tax money who don't deserve it. Some people are out there to milk the system, and over-breed welfare families for an extra dime, but the Republicans are out to screw those same human beings by denying them women's health rights in the name of "personal responsibility." Where is he actually on this issue? He flip-flopped so much I can't keep track. I do believe however, that Obama's healthcare bill is lackluster, and I have stated many times it just forces people to participate in the insurance company mafia racket. If he really was a "socialist" he would promote single payer, and not be in the back pockets of the insurance industry and big pharma. Don't get me wrong, I seriously dislike Obama, as much as I dislike Mitt. Mitt saying 47% of america won't vote for him because they are playing "victim" isn't getting these people out of the hole so they can live Mitt's life, nor is it garnering any support. He's not changing any minds with that speech, in fact the corruption that the common person sees happening might just drive them further away from someone like Mitt. To say that human beings aren't entitled to medical coverage while the government continues to be in bed with the insurance companies and big pharma who are ruining the health of people for the sake of self interest and profit is also rather reckless. Everyone wants to do well, have that house on the hill, and succeed. It's impossible to do that when the price of success (tuition, housing, groceries, gas,and life in general) keeps rising and the value of our dollar keeps falling due to quantitative easing, and just when you think you have everything straight you get some messed up horrible disease like cancer. Oh and how are students supposed to get to college on merit if the education system in this country is deplorable. I use this as an example all the time, but have you seen the grammar on the internet? It makes me cry! Mitt wants the people of this country to rise, but he wants to cut all the tools to help them rise and instead blow more money on warmongering with netanyahu over Iran. The empire is broke, it is time to bring the troops home and leave the mideast alone. They don't want us there. See them all burning US flags? Hello, let's go home and take care of home, which is the american dream, which is broken...

  ...I feel like both parties are horribly out of touch. I have never had such distress about voting before. It was always so clear-cut for me in the past-- vote democrat. Then OWS, for better or for worse of opinions, happened, and it caused me to dig deeper. Way deeper. From economics to nutty conspiracies to corporatocracy it made me read more, and open my eyes, and for that after a year I am grateful, as my formerly (admittedly) superficial understanding of things has grown. But voting, on the other hand, has become exceedingly difficult."

 So, flat out, I can start by saying I am NOT, under any circumstances, voting for Mitt Romney. I just can't, in good conscience, vote for someone so out of touch with the ills of this country, and I cannot condone his foreign policy views. Lest we forget his cozy relationship with Netanyahu and his brown-nosing speech about Israel being a lonely flower in the desert. Sorry, I'm not buying it, foreign aid of all sorts to all nations is a pet peeve of mine. This nation is broke, and spending on more war and bribing more nations into submission with "foreign aid" is uncalled for. 

Ron Paul, my first choice for president, is out of the race. Jill Stein fits my views as well, and she has a more compassionate view of education, womens' issues, and health care. But go and say Jill Stein to any person you know, and the resounding answer will be "Jill Who!?" So that, unfortunately is a vote thrown into the toilet, as there are nowhere near enough people who know her, let alone like her to vote for her to actually win this late stage of the game. So I am left with dumb and dumber. Or Goldman Sachs vs Goldman Sachs. Or Fascism with womens' health or Fascism without womens' health. How sad this is how far we have fallen. How sad I am having such a difficult time of going into the voting booth and clicking Obama. Maybe if he wouldn't have disappointed me so much regarding civil liberties (NDAA, drones, etc) I wouldn't have such a hard time. Maybe if he wouldn't have gotten involved in mideast politics and encouraged the Arab not-so-Spring and put extremists into power, I would still like him. Maybe if the Obamacare was actually single payer which made the insurance company racket obsolete, I would still like him. Unfortunately, for being the First Democrat President Post 9/11, he has disappointed me, and disappointed me badly.

I feel, however, for the sake of national security (yeah, it's that serious) that I actually have to get my voting finger out, double bag some latex gloves, and stick my finger into that rotten cesspool called democratic two-party voting, and vote for Obama. Here is why: Romney scares the shit out of me. His foreign policy issues are frightening beyond belief. Obama put NDAA indefinite detention there, yeah, But I'm more worried about how Romney will use that provision than Obama. Romney is nuts. Completely out of touch with the people, and his ultra-hawkish foreign policy which panders to the Bush-Cheney era neocons has the potential to ignite the world into a war, unless you are thinking it already has ignited into WWIII but unofficially. 

But then, I think to myself about Obama, and how he is the architect of the NDAA indefinite detention provision, and how he continues to defend the provision in court cases that have challenged it.  If you have the time, or make the time, you can read the permanent injunction issued by Katherine Forrest here, He also appointed a former head of Monsanto to the FDA, and that is quite upsetting as well.  Another serious sticking point I have with Obama now, which I admittedly did not have in 2008, is his stance on the Federal Reserve, which is no stance at all-- Just keep stimulating and devaluing the currency. The FED is the root of all our problems, and central banks have been playing all sides of wars for decades. But this still won't make me vote for Romney. I just can't. I am sickened to my core by both of these candidates who are so out of touch with the issues at hand that it is just staggering. 

There is also an option to just NOT VOTE, and not participate in the corruption. There are those who say there are issues with the 14th amendment and the Citizens United ruling where there are grounds  for people to not vote out of protest, and it gets into this whole legal jargon between common law, Roman law, admiralty law, and Black's Law dictionary, and enslavement via paper documents (Straw Man Theory) but I'm not so sure I would go there either, and a lot of that stuff sounds secessionist. I'll keep my head squarely on my shoulders and stay far away from that one. Going back to Jesse Ventura, a better solution he offered about Citizens United was to amend the Constitution.  I guess the campaigns would try to label me a "swing voter," but I'm really not. I'm a disgusted voter. I am so sick of the choices we are given but in the end is it really the lesser of two evils? Everything is going to shit, but pick the guy who is less worse so when it goes to shit, it will just be shit not diarrhea that has to be cleaned up afterward. 

And this post has gotten me nowhere. I haven't resolved my painful voting conundrum, not one bit. Should I vote? Just to stave off Mittens Romney, who is his own worst enemy in the campaign?