America’s Electoral Farce - By Chris Hedges

[kpete]

America’s Electoral Farce

Posted on Jun 16, 2015

By Chris Hedges
I intend to devote no more time to the upcoming presidential elections than walking to my local polling station on Election Day, voting for a third-party candidate, most likely the Green Party candidate, and going home. Any further energy invested in these elections, including championing Bernie Sanders’ ill-advised decision to validate the Democratic Party by becoming one of its presidential candidates, is a waste of time.

Every action we take now must be directed at ripping down the structures of the corporate state. This means refusing to co-operate. It means joining or building radical mass movements. It means carrying out sustained acts of civil disobedience, as Kayactivists are doing in Seattle and fishing communities such as Kodiak, Cordova and Homer, as well as a dozen indigenous tribes, are doing in Alaska, to physically halt fracking, drilling for oil and natural gas or U.S. Navy training exercises in the pristine waters of the Arctic. It means striking for a $15 minimum wage. It means blocking city streets to demand an end to the indiscriminate use of lethal force by militarized police, especially against poor people of color. It means, in large and small ways, acts of open rebellion. It means always having as the primary objective the disrupting and overthrowing of corporate power. It means not playing the game.

The corporate state seeks to get us to participate in the political charade of choreographed elections. It seeks to make us play by its rules. Our corporate media, flush with the dollars from political advertising, fills the airwaves with the ridiculous and the trivial. Candidates, pollsters, political strategists, pundits and celebrity journalists provide endless loops of banal and absurd “political” chatter, all of it a grotesque form of anti-politics. We will be bombarded with this propaganda, largely centered on the manufactured personalities of candidates, for many months. Tune it out. It means nothing

.............

the sad rest:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_electoral_farce_20150616

[Nye Bevan]

1. Those interested in reading more about Chris Hedge's ideas to overthrow corporate power

can buy his latest book on Amazon.com for $20.33, or $14.57 as a Kindle ebook.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_12?k=chris+hedges&sprefix=chris+hedges

[sufrommich]

5. Who knew becoming an armchair warrior could be so profitable. nt

[JaneyVee]

8. And he won't be the one blocking streets or rowing a kayak I bet.

[marmar]

10. Actually. He does. Often. He's been arrested several times during protests.

Some people actually do walk the walk.

[MohRokTah]

2. Hedges is a moron.

He suggests overthrowing the corporate power by doing absolutely nothing.

[marmar]

4. "overthrowing the corporate power by doing absolutely nothing."

I think you missed the point.

[MohRokTah]

7. No, Hedges did. eom

[DetlefK]

3. Newsflash: The US electoral system is geared to makes votes for a third party useless.

You might as well call for not voting at all.

The US-democracy is grotesque, bastardized, outdated and corrupt. (Compare it to other democracies and see how it fares.)
You won't change that by voting for somebody who has not a chance in hell to begin with or by standing around while holding a sign.

[Starry Messenger]

6. He's getting to be a one-trick pony.

He comes out with a variation on this article almost every election.

Yes, it is important to be involved in mass movements. Elections are also mass movements that are foolish to ignore if you claim to be truly engaged in community work.

[randome]

9. But...but...the Founders!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]