Belligerence about your choice not to vote, or your insistence that ‘voting doesn’t matter’ because of some set of imaginary moral principles you’ve constructed in your head, is the absolute peak embodiment of straight white guy privilege.
(Somehow, not surprisingly, it’s only ever 20-30s white guys who seem to take this sort of pride in not participating in the civic process. Go figure.)
Voting might not ‘matter’ to you. I’m sure you think ‘nothing will change’. But women, people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBT people and other underprivileged groups are literally fighting for their lives every time they go to vote.
“But it doesn’t matter! Nothing will change unless I pretend to fight the system by not taking part in the system!”
Antisemitic and racial incidents of hate and violence are reaching all-time highs, and the federal government has decided to shout ‘nahnah nahnah, I can’t hear you!’ by killing grants for organizations that research and combat far-right extremism and violence. Years past conservative outrage over FBI investigations into domestic right-wing terrorism (including white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement) ensured that we have to rely on critically underfunded and neglected private and nonprofit entities to do the research on far-right extremist violence. Meanwhile the president of the United States emboldens bigots with a constant stream of inflammatory hate speech and promotion of tired conspiracy theories, many of which play on the same classic antisemitism of old.
Climate change presents an increasingly dangerous threat to the very existence of the human race (and yes, that includes you, protest-voting white guy), but half of the party in power blatantly denies it exists, while the other half downplays its effects so they can continue to secure lucrative campaign support from oil companies and other industries that stand to lose a lot of money if we start to pass legislation to control climate change.
The federal government has made numerous attempts to strip transgender people of rights and protections, including attempts to ban transgender people serving in the military, and strip hate crime and protected minority status from transgender people.
The party in power has made no mystery of the fact that for over 30 years they’ve fought an endless war against women’s rights in the workplace and in reproductive care and choice. Combine this with derogatory rhetoric straight from the bully pulpit itself regarding women and promotion of abuse against them, and the nomination of abusers and rapists like Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh, and you have women fighting for their right to control their own bodies and dignity with every vote cast.
The federal government continues to put barriers in place for immigrants and the children of immigrants, from the president musing about revoking jus soli birthright citizenship, to continued racialized rhetoric against people from other countries, to an ongoing battle to expel immigrants who came here as children and have literally spent their entire lives living and working in America.
It doesn’t matter to you, does it? how do you think they feel?
Most importantly, though, who do you think not voting, or throwing away your vote, actually benefits?
It doesn’t benefit you. You literally threw away your chance to effect change in the system. If it gives you some kind of ‘feel good’ sensation in thinking you just stuck it to the man and that your protest vote will REALLY help Jill Stein or who-the-fuck-ever win in 2020, consider this - all you’re actually doing is literally playing in to the hands of the people in charge. Because if we don’t exert pressure on public figures by threatening to throw them out of office, guess what? Nothing changes. Congratulations - you’ve accomplished exactly what you think you’re fighting against. By giving the people in power a pass, you’ve guaranteed they’ll keep doing exactly what they’re doing.
Because you know who does vote? The people you claim to hate. The powerful people. The wealthy people, the people maintaining the status quo. The baby boomers and the regressives. They’ll be happily casting their vote for their same-old same-old candidates while you pretend you’re a paragon of transgressive thought by writing ‘dank memez’ into the write-in box or something.
So the next time you’re out with your friends or hopping onto tumblr and decide to brag about how you voted for Mickey Mouse or the Libertarian Party, considering that all of your friends probably think you’re an idiot. Not just an idiot, but a reckless, selfish, dangerous idiot, who’s helping to perpetuate the oppression of underprivileged groups by doing exactly what the people in power that you claim to hate want you to do.