Election day is rapidly approaching, and with each passing day, I can feel the fear growing in my chest. Will this be the presidential term that strips me of my rights? Will I lose the access to health care that I had to fight to secure? Will I be thrown into prison and locked in purgatory until the state forces me into submission? Will we lose loved ones to unchecked state violence?
As always, the answer is probably not. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re getting a little closer each year. If you look at the presidential candidates, you’ll see two ideologically identical demagogues. In fact, I truly believe that the most significant difference between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is that Harris maintains a level of charisma that allows her to defend her fascistic beliefs.
I admit that I too may lean toward the liberal side. I was overjoyed when President Joe Biden withdrew from the race. I thought Harris would stop Trump and his war path. But reality quickly set in when I remembered how much I hated her. After all, she is another career politician who made a name for herself by exploiting and imprisoning millions of people. Again, I felt a moment of reprieve when she named Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. I think part of me is always looking for a fleeting sense of joy regarding the current political climate. Everything feels inevitable, and it’s easy to fall into the cliché that Democrats are good and Republicans are bad.
In the end, I decided to give it all up. There will never be a mainstream candidate that I can accept. My politics are centered around joy. My ideal is freedom. In America’s oligarchic meritocracy, the state exists solely to exploit me. No politician can bring me joy, no policy can ease the pain of capitalism. I’m trash to the nation. I’m just a loud dissident they’ll fight to silence.
Opinion Editor-in-Chief Manas Pandit tells us how important it is to avoid ‘fatalism’. I ask him again, as I have asked him many times before. How? How can anyone look at our political situation and feel anything other than doom? There is no hope left. All America has to show for it is centuries of unjust violence, empty promises, and a handful of billionaires who have learned the most effective methods of exploitation.
My fellow Opinion Editorial Assistant Sam Cavaheiro talks about how your vote doesn’t matter in a presidential election. For him, it all comes down to local elections. I think his position is great, but I can’t say I agree. When I hear “local elections,” all I can think of is a bright blue hub in my hometown of Atlanta.
I remember the “progressives” who imprisoned my friends and comrades. I think of the Stop Cop City movement and the tireless hours Mayor Andre Dickens spent trying to crush it. I think of all the Democrats who raised my hopes by campaigning for meaningful change and reform, only to turn around and try to stab us all in the back. I have never been more disillusioned with the Democratic Party.
Inevitably when articles like this are published, you can already hear the liberal drone: “That’s why it’s important to vote!” Make your voice heard! Get these people out of your office! ”I can hear people thinking about that very thing right now. I truly understand where you are coming from and have been one of the voices in that crowd before. But I can’t believe it anymore. The structure of our government is such that any politician is set up to fail. The most promising contemporary politician for progressives was Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now she represents everything that is wrong with the mainstream left. She has proven to be nothing but another spineless career politician trying to climb the ladder. This system is inherently evil and corrupts even the most well-meaning people who seek to be a part of it.
Liberals across the country support Harris. Ms. Harris has built her entire campaign around the sentiment that, at the very least, she is not Mr. Trump. She has no progressive policies at all. In September, she visited the U.S.-Mexico border in preparation for announcing plans to take a tougher stance on immigration. She believes that Donald will “build the wall!” Trump has been too generous on the southern border. In an interview with NBC in October, she was asked whether transgender people should receive gender-affirming medical care. Her answer was simply, “I think we should follow the law,” which is an incredibly meaningless sentiment expressed by the people who made the law. When asked, she was reluctant to simply say that transgender people should have access to health care.
This is a perfect encapsulation of a larger problem. My politics are fundamentally at odds with those of mainstream politicians. I’m not a “single issue voter.” The problem is not that Harris leans enough toward my political leanings. We operate from two completely different locations. Our conflicting visions are irreconcilable. We have two fundamentally different understandings of how the world works. I don’t want a permissive attitude towards immigration. With all borders destroyed, I would like the very concept of immigration to disappear. I don’t want transgender people to be reluctantly given medical care. I want them to be openly welcomed into our society. I want to see the entire system collapse and from its ashes build a just and equitable world centered on collaboration and joy.
“But Zack, we have to stop Project 2025!” I wholeheartedly agree. But what will Harris do to avoid becoming Project 2029? What concrete steps will she take to permanently secure our rights? How is she going to codify universal abortion access? How can she guarantee the safety of transgender people? When will she end the massacre in Gaza? Harris has been vice president for years and accomplished virtually nothing. I just listen too much to the empty platitudes that Democrats like to spoon-feed us. She has made it abundantly clear that all she cares about is maintaining the status quo.
Every time I talk about how I feel about this issue, I see the faces of the liberals around me start to twitch. I know how hard they have to fight the urge to call me a terrible person. They’re itching to start screaming at me. You are so naive! It’s obvious you’re just a closet Trump supporter!’ Again, I’ve been there before and I understand where this impulse comes from. Liberals are quick to moralize my decision not to vote. They are fighting for reform, but they don’t understand that I am fighting for liberation. I am an enemy to them, just as I am an enemy to them. I give these people some patience. Because they’ve never pinned all their hopes on a progressive candidate and find out that person just stabs them in the back the first chance they get.
In this article, I’m not trying to say that voting is inherently bad. Some people genuinely love and believe in the Democratic Party. Some people acknowledge their fault but do not want the Republican Party to be in power. If you want to go to a Harris rally, hold hands and sing about coconut trees, the choice is completely up to you. If you want to disappoint another closeted conservative who pretends to care about you, you absolutely should. So go ahead and give yourself a continual pat on your back by voting and wearing your “I Voted” sticker for a week and a half. But I believe there is more to it than that. I refuse to be complicit with this genocidal, fascist regime any longer.
So what is left for people like me? We refuse to give up our principles, but not much else. Many of us are tired and angry and lock ourselves away, just wallowing in our own misery. Some of us join left-wing organizations or communist parties and spend our lives chasing our own tails and pretending to be doing something. To be honest, I have no idea what’s out there. In short, they are lost and wandering. I will not vote for or support any person or party that wants me dead. I hope every day that things change. Until then, I would like to look for fun. I build community and nurture relationships. I organize, I fight, and I have to believe that we will win in the end.
Zack Leach can be contacted at: (email protected) I followed X at @ZachLeach12.
