One thing that the current system does really well is make us all forget our own agency. We inherit and are sort of force-fed ideologies which make it very hard to change or learn. The flavor of those ideologies varies widely by target demographic, and the nature of the system itself makes each of us feel like we came to the conclusions we’ve been given entirely on our own- but in reality, none of us, not one, are immune to propaganda. To me, when my thoughts are still being driven by this removal of agency, it often feels like a little burr stuck in my hair when I’m thinking about a decision, like there’s something catching in my thinking, but I can’t quite find it, and I don’t know how to get it out. But something doesn’t feel clean or clear.
As someone with a beard which gets stuff stuck in it all the time, I’m painfully aware of the etiquette around helping people become aware of stuff stuck in their hair. For clarity, if you’ve ever had a conversation with somebody with a beard who had something stuck in their beard, and you didn’t say anything, just know that they were annoyed at you when they next saw a mirror. So this is me trying to carry beard etiquette into politics, with this reminder-
Regardless of what signs are in your yard, what you’ve loudly said online, regardless of it all- you’re free to vote for whoever you want when you enter that voting booth. You have agency.
Maybe you hate the government and think the democrats are a bunch of sold-out corporate hacks who lie every time they open their smug mouths. Maybe you feel like the whole country’s going to hell, so you’ve been planning on voting for Trump, but you can feel some little burr caught in your thinking, because on some level you can tell that you wouldn’t trust him alone with any woman you care about. Or because no mater how much you hate this entire shitshow of a government, some part of you can tell that he’s a selfish con man who really doesn’t give a fk about any of us. Or because you learned that if he’d just put his daddy’s money in a high-yield savings account he’d have twice his current wealth, so when you look at the math, he lost as much money as he currently has pretending to be a businessman and bankrupting businesses. Maybe it was when he said he wanted firing squads, or to be a dictator, or how he wants the government to track young women’s period cycles. Maybe some part of you can tell that even though Harris is a complete scum bag, the people you care about will be safer under her leadership than they would be under Trump. Whatever the burr is, if any of those things feel real to you, you can choose to vote against him, even if it’s for someone you hate almost as much, just because she’s obviously a little bit less of a cartoon villain. if any of those things actually rubbed you the wrong way- no matter what sign you have on your lawn, without saying anything to anybody- you still have agency. You can walk into that booth in privacy, choke back the vomit that comes up as you do this, and check the box next to Kamala’s name. I grew up and live in a tiny super conservative town, most of the guys around here would have some hard times in their friend groups if they admitted they voted for Harris, and most of them don’t actually want a dictator. So this is permission. If it’s what you need to do to keep your community for now, you can vote against the failed businessman who wants to be a dictator, and lie about it.
Maybe you’re appropriately outraged about what Biden’s administration is doing in Palestine, and can see the cycle of accelerating right-ward drift in US politics, and that we absolutely need to stop it now. And maybe you can feel a burr of thought sticking in the idea of voting third party or not voting as a way to try and address that, because some part of you understands that there is no option of clean hands here. You can tell that Stein is polling at 1%, and that she’s not going to get the 5% she’s aiming for to get funding, but that her 1% might hand Trump the white house. You can tell that the democrats don’t actually care at all if they lose this election, because they’re not trying to win elections, they’re just trying to continue acting at the political wing of the corporations. Put succinctly, you can tell that the work we need to do in order to create real change can’t be done from a ballot alone. There is no vote that can fix this. You can tell that you need to dedicate your life to creating alternative systems which draw energy away from these evil systems which only give us these options on a ballot. You can tell that a long term, committed strategy of diverse tactics is necessary, not just one vote that won’t only fail, but is likely to make this system far, far worse, is not actually holistic ethics. Some part of you can feel that to pretend otherwise, to pretend that you can address the systemic change necessary from a ballot box, is to pretend to have far more agency in a single moment than we actually do- and that’s neither courage nor strategy. Maybe some part of you can tell that voting against Harris is prioritizing opposing one pretty run-of-the-mill US war criminal over the actual lives and bodies of the victims of the system she represents, who will suffer far more under Trump. But you’ve been campaigning for Stein, or saying you won’t vote for her for a year. Isn’t it hypocritical to do anything else now? Doesn’t it make you a liar?
Put simply, no. It just makes you good at strategy, instead of getting hung up on tactics. Condemning Harris for the last year has been a great tactic. Now, voting for her is the best tactic we have in this election- and then we get back to the real work of educating and organizing. We use a diversity of tactics to structurally guide the collapse of the system that made us make that evil choice, while simultaneously developing personal, relational, community, and society-based systems which render it irrelevant and reveal it’s nature. That’s the work. Voting for Harris does nothing to create a better world or oppose the system that’s ending the world- all it does is choose the circumstances in which we think we’ll be better equipped to do that work. If all we do is vote, then we’re letting them run the whole game. But if we use our votes strategically in order to shape the context in which we do the rest of our work, then our votes are ethical and strategic action to shape the game board in the way that gives us the best odds of success.
Most of the arguments I hear against voting at all, and many for voting third-party, rest on the idea that our engagement validates the system, or lends credibility to it, or makes us complicit. There’s a very real risk of that, but it’s easily addressed. If voting at all, or voting for Harris, makes us less likely to engage in the meaningful work of real change, then our votes have made us complicit and lent credibility to the system. If we do that, then we’re giving up more agency than we’re exercising; we’re putting ourselves under the boot. But voting absolutely doesn’t have to do that. We can vote and then engage more than we would have if we hadn’t voted, because of how bitter the vomit we had to choke back while checking the box next to a war criminal tasted. So this idea that it’s complicity is a false dichotomy. It’s not EITHER voting OR lifelong action- the most effective strategy by far is both.
The propaganda model strips us of our agency in many ways. One is through binary thinking. We’re taught to think of politics like sports, where you always support your team. This is emotional training for blind nationalism, and it locks us all into their game. Another is by reducing the entire spectrum of possible engagement down to just electoral politics. That’s their game, that’s their system. So long as we’re only playing that game, we’re guaranteed to lose. But when we start engaging off their board, when we refuse to accept the rules of their rigged game- then our engagement in electoral politics becomes strategic in our favor. So there’s no lie or hypocrisy at all in spending a year saying we won’t vote for her, and then voting for her- it’s just 4th scale political strategy, it’s big-picture.
And just like how a lot of my conservative neighbors would have a hard time socially if they named that they’d voted for Harris, so a bunch of my leftist friends would have a hard time socially if they made the same vote. So this is my meat light shining on your agency- you can absolutely not tell anyone who you voted for. You can lie about who you voted for, if that’s what keeps you safe right now- physically, socially, mentally. You have agency, and your agency lets you see tensions honestly. I’m crystal clear about my hatred of Harris and everything she stands for- that’s not some little burr stuck in my thoughts that I can’t quite see or reconcile- that’s clear as day, and my strategic choice includes facing that honestly.
And your agency goes all the way. You have the agency to completely disagree with me. Even if your lawn is covered in Harris signs and you’ve been cheering for her, but you have some little burr of thought that maybe you think a failed businessman who wants to be a dictator would be great, or that Stein getting 1.1% instead of 1% in her performative failure that is likely to hand the dictator the white house would be better, you have the agency to go vote for Trump or 3rd party and never tell anyone.
Our collective agency is where real power grows. Unions have always been the heart of resistance to fascism. I’m just learning about vote swapping, which seems awesome, check it out. Voting down-ballot is incredibly important, and may determine whether this election matters at all, because it seems like if the Republicans still hold Speaker, then they may not certify this election unless it goes to Trump, which is horrifying. So regardless of your political leanings, if having any of your votes matter at all ever again is important to you, it seems strategic to vote for the democratic candidates down the full ballot.
Back to the point though- out beyond the propaganda, beyond the binary thinking, beyond the weird pretense that we’re not all learning all the time- we’re all actually completely free to do whatever we like. Like I said, this is just me shining a light. You have this agency already- I don’t have the authority to give it to you any more than the propaganda model has the authority to take it away. Your agency is innate. All the propaganda model can do is try and make you not realize that you have this agency, and all well-intentioned people can do is try and reveal your agency to you. You have the agency to performatively fail in a way that makes things worse. You have the power to act strategically in small ways, and you have the power to dedicate your life to structural change. You have the power to learn, grow, and heal. In the Wise Words of Captain Planet: “The Power is Yours!” Use it wisely.