Why American Men Should Refuse To Vote

Tomorrow, the U.S. holds its midterm elections. While not quite the orgy of inanity that is a presidential election, there’ll be plenty of idiocy pouring out of the chattering classes like diarrhea out of a sewer pipe for weeks to come:

Well Jim, the Elephants look like they’re going to win this one, but the Donkeys aren’t going down without a fight.

True, John, the Donkeys have many loyal supporters but the Elephants are fired up and angry and have the momentum…

Hold on, McConnell has the ball and is dashing for the finish line! Can Alison Lundergan Grimes catch up with him! She’s struggling… TOUCHDOWN! THE ELEPHANTS WIN! THHHEEE ELEPHANTS WIN!

Politics is football for the over-educated and under-read: they’re both spectator sports that are slow, overly commercialized, boring, and meaningless. And while someone like myself born without the sports gene can at least have fun at a Super Bowl party, there’s no mirth to be found in the cavalcade of stupidity that is the American body politic. Yet for some reason, I’m expected to participate in the charade of politics by casting a vote every year.

I refuse. I haven’t voted in three years, I’m not voting this year, and I’m not voting ever again. Here is why all American men should follow my lead.

1. Your vote is meaningless

I mean this both literally and metaphorically. In a nation of 300 million imbeciles, your vote as a sane man is outweighed by the lazy and the crazy. The average American reads at a eighth-grade level, doesn’t pay attention to the news and has an IQ in the 90s. Their votes count just as much as yours. If you live in a state where legislative districts are gerrymandered to favor one or both of the major parties (i.e. almost all of them), your ballot is worth even less. And God help you if you’re a Republican in Cook County, Illinois or you live anywhere else where voting fraud is rampant.

Not only that, elected politicians comprise only one part of the government: the weakest part. As James Burnham predicted in his brilliant book The Managerial Revolution, power in the U.S. has gradually been shifting from public officials to unelected, unaccountable managers. Civil servants, the Federal Reserve, and alphabet agencies such as the FBI and NSA have far more power than Congress or even the president himself. Can your vote to determine who runs the NSA or the Fed? No, you can’t.

2. Politicians on both the left and right hate you

There is not a single politician of importance in the U.S., liberal or conservative, who gives a damn about men’s issues. The Democrats have abandoned all pretense of being a party for the common man and have made gimmedats for single mothers and feminist urban slut machines the centerpiece of their platform. NAFTA, the piece of legislation that has done the most damage to the middle class in the past twenty years, was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president.

But anyone who thinks the Republicans are any better is smoking crack. While the GOP is not as overtly malicious as the Jackass Party, their leading figureheads are just as equally corrupt and beholden to corporate interests. There are no Republican politicians advocating for the abolition of alimony, family court reform or any issues that would improve the quality of life for men in America. Indeed, the Christian wing of the GOP has a disturbing tendency to white knight for women, as shown by such things as IMBRA (International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, an unconstitutional attempt to keep men from marrying foreign women) being co-sponsored by two conservative Republicans.

Furthermore, while Republicans are marginally less insane than Democrats when it comes to economics, they have a disturbing obsession with picking on the poor and downtrodden. For example, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a folk hero among conservatives for his battles with the state’s overpaid civil servants, supported a bill that would allow retailers like Wal-Mart to force their employees to work seven days a week. I’m not stupid enough to think a $15 minimum wage is a good idea, but neither is treating our poorest citizens like feudal serfs.

If you’re a productive, industrious man, both Republicans and Democrats want to fuck you in the ass. The only difference is that the GOP will use Astroglide and cuddle with you afterwards. How about we choose not to have our sphincters split open?

3. Politics itself is a charade

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s difficult to look at the pageantry of American politics and conclude that they aren’t all in on the scam. Unless you’re a low-information voter who only cares about government handouts and boutique issues like abortion and gay marriage, both the Jackass Party and the Dumbass Party are bound to disappoint you. Neither party has any interest in solving the issues it purports to care about, because keeping their supporters unsatisfied is the only way to motivate them to turn out at the polls.

For example, everyone made a huge deal about how House Republicans “shut down the government” (in quotes because the important agencies, like the NSA, mysteriously kept running despite the lack of funding) last year in order to stop Obamacare. I predicted that John Boehner and company would do an 11th hour about-face and cave to every single one of Obama’s demands, then go back to their constituents sniffling “Welp, we tried, but we just couldn’t stop Obamacare, sorry. But please pretty please vote for us next year!” And—SHOCK! HORROR! SURPRISE!—I was right.

The Democrats pull the same shell game with their constituents. Obama was swept into office on the promise that he would close Guantanamo Bay, repeal the PATRIOT Act and end the erosion of civil liberties that defined Bush’s presidency. Six years later, Gitmo is still open, the NSA is spying on our every move and Obama has decided to one-up Bush by killing people without due process with drone strikes. Add in the bogus prosecutions of Republicans for “corruption” in the past year—and Obama’s complete inaction in regards to Wall Street corruption—and a pretty ugly picture emerges.

There is only one way to fight the corruption of our political class: refuse to vote. Merely casting a ballot, regardless of who it is for, is an act of acquiescence to the system. I regard the United States as a degenerate failed state incapable of doing anything aside from oppressing its citizens. I may not be able to keep the IRS’s fingers out of my wallet or NSA cronies from jerking off to my girlfriend’s nude selfies, but I can refuse to give the entity that controls them my stamp of approval.

So tomorrow, stay home. Play video games. Make love to your girlfriend. Snort an eight-ball and watch reruns of Girls. But for the love of God, don’t vote.

Read More: The Republican Party Needs To Go Away