The 2024 elections have been quite a bit of a litmus test of not just American society and politics, alongside their system, but also the international capitalist system as a whole. There’s basically a whole lot to blame here: from the Democratic party’s inability to run a proper campaign and the rise of fascism in the US to the voters’ inability to vote in general properly with two neurons upfront. Donald Trump won, and I know, it’s infuriating and disappointing, and a lot of you are wondering, what do you do now that this said democracy is at risk of vanishing into thin air? Well, let me put it in layman’s terms: there was no democracy to begin with.
The American and, hence, the capitalist lie has been that voting is the only place where the people could decide what or who runs a country and that they can sit in their couch calmfully while history unfolds before their eyes. “Ignorance is bliss”, especially given how the system itself relies on the inability of the people, the working class one, that is, to make valuable and powerful political decisions outside of the election season. This has been going on for ages in many, many western countries that are run by a democracy of sorts, or, what I call, “representative democracy”. And sometimes this gives an excuse for the bourgeoisie to stroll their monsters around, like Trump or Milei or even Bolsonaro. It’s a coercion system designed by the rich bourgeois class to create the illusion for the people that they have, at least, a minimum of control over the decisions of a country like America.
America’s electoral system, on the other hand, is a joke. An authoritarian oligarchy. A convoluted, confusing system designed for the ignorant to throw away their vote and gamble it away for two of the mainline candidates. And if you most of the time throw your vote to a third party, you’re throwing your vote away into nothing.
The problem is that, if you really think politics don’t happen outside of an electoral season, you’re doing politics wrong. Politics happen all year, every year. Many microdecisions are made not just by political parties all around the globe, but also smaller entities like labor unions, PACs, worker guilds, NGOs and so on. If you only look at the miopic view of the elections, you’re missing out on a lot more, especially if you’re a politics concerned person.
I know the news about Donald Trump winning are a disaster, and this might lead to a lot of people losing hope in the country and the world as a whole. Even fear might rear its head, but you know, I abide by the words of the OG Star Wars’ prequels’ Yoda for a tiny bit, and the pretty famous ones: “fear brings wrath” and so on. Well, fear brings wrath, and wrath brings some action about the situation. And a lot of that anger against Trump is justified, rightfully so, but it should not go to waste.
Organize in your unions, guilds and organizations. Try to make an impact in your local community. Help those marginalized communities around you. Go on strikes. Protest on the streets, even violently… very, very violently. Political actions should not be just limited to throwing a vote into a ballot, but also in those smaller, rather impactful actions that surround your community. That’s one thing to do against the rising threat of fascism, for sure, but the desperation mindset would kick in too. For that, I’d like to preface this with a book written by Victor Frankl, “The man in the search of meaning”.
Frankl has been a psychologist trapped inside a nazi concentration camp back in World War II. He has watched desperate prisoners become survivors by finding some sort of purpose or meaning in their lives that pushed them forward to survive. The lesson, as a bit of a summary, is that bad things outside of our control can happen even, but that shouldn’t just detract from our search of purpose, or our life’s purpose at all. This has been recommended by my psychotherapist a while ago to reflect upon these sorts of situations. And I found myself in a bit of a similar situation, aimless. But the lesson remains: these labor unions, orgs and guilds are the vehicles to go forward, alongside many things, but without the map of purpose in our life, we’re pretty much lost.
That’s why it’s vitally important to tell you this: don’t give the fuckers the satisfaction of you not existing, whether you’re transgender, LGBTQI+, black, latinx, jewish or whatever you may be as a marginalized person. The less you suffer, the more they suffer. Your continued existence as a real and alive person can hurt them on the long and short term. Just live.
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