D’ya know the thing I hate most about elections - even more then the lying scumfucks who promise us the moon and the stars? What I *REALLY* hate is that every four years everyone gets totally sidetracked by this trivial irrelevant bullshit puppetshow and diverts their organizing energy away from all the vitally important real organizing work that needs to be done and instead pours hundreds of thousands of hours and billions of dollars into a corporate-controlled clusterfuck in the hopes of getting a “lesser evil” elected; and at the end of that whole ridiculous process all we get is 4 more years of the same old bullshit and we’re left even more dis-empowered then before

At the end of the day, the American federal government is a dictatorship, a dictatorship by committee with a wide base of support,  but a dictatorship no less.  The people who hold the real power are not the voters or even the political parties, it’s the  elites - the wealthiest 2% of the population that own upwards of 90% of the wealth and whose interests have always and will always reign supreme as long as we maintain an economic system based on economic inequality.   No Democrat or Republican would even dream of changing that arrangement because it’s that exact arrangement that provides them the power they crave; but until that arrangement is changed meaningful democracy is impossible and getting pumped up about elections is a waste of time.

Not that getting all sad about it is going to do us any good, but fuck begging politicians for scraps from the table we built and the meal we cooked.  The common heritage of humanity - the wealth of this world - was created by uncounted generations of working people all over the world.  To allow a tiny monority to claim the vast majority of that wealth and leave the rest of us struggling to survive on the scraps is beyond obscene.  This world belongs to everyone, not just to the thieving parasites who run the various corporations, governments, and military’s that draw lines in the dirt and divide up our world between themselves.  As George Washington put it “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” And the purpose of that force?  It’s reason d’etre?  As James Madison put it during the constitutional convention: “The Primary role of Government is to protect Property from the Majority”.

The State is not a neutral party.  It’s role is - and has always been - to protect the wealth, privilege, and power of the elites and to suppress the efforts of ordinary people to contest that power.  When the police preemptively arrest hundreds of people - including dozens of journalists - for protesting and then charge them as Terrorists it is not a sign of a system run amok, as the liberals like to say.  It is a sign of a system in perfect health, operating at max efficiency.  I’ll say that again:  The system is not broken, it is working exactly as intended.  Free speech suppressed?  dissent demonized?  ordinary people who dare to speak up jailed and intimidated with ridiculous trumped up charges?  Those are all signs of a healthy State, a government doing exactly what it was designed to do.  Bush isn’t the problem, he’s just the latest in a long line of expendable puppets.  When Bill Clinton was in office before him things were exactly the same.  and when Bush Sr. was in office before him, things were also exactly the same.   That’s what the police are FOR.  dealing with “criminals” is just a handy excuse to trick the rest of us into agreeing to pay for taxes to pay, train, and equip the stormtroopers needed to intimidate and abuse us and make sure we don’t step too far out of line.  Government is Force and the Police are the fists of the State, just like the politicians are it’s mask, human faces worn by a monster to hide it’s true nature.  And when we get sick of the mask it throws it away and gets a handy new one.   Nothing changes - it’s just a mask after all - and underneath the beast remains unchanged and unchallenged.

The “legitimacy” of a nation state is the same as the legitimacy of a neighborhood crime boss - it exists only because those that question it meet a swift and painful end.  It is a tyranny of force, a system predicated on violence and coercion, and it is fundamentally illegitimate and immoral.  Only a fool would believe that such a system can be tamed and made to work in the interests of the working-class majority through electoral reform.  That’s like believing it’s possible to win the Casino itself if you just play the slots long enough.  Sure, at best you might win a few coins, but odds are you’ll lose your shirt.  The only guarantee is that the house always wins and that you’ll never  - EVER - walk away with more then a few coins.  Understand it for what it is - a diversion, a puppet show designed to distract us from the people who wield the real power.

So stop begging for change from Politicians, you’ll never get it that way.  The best any of us can do is to dig in and do the hard work of building strong autonomous working-class organizations that can fight for the real change we need - not the phony meaningless cliches  spouted off endlessly by Obama, McCain, Clinton, Palin, Bush, Kerry, Gore, and and all the other slimy fuckers who claim to have the right to rule us.  When we have the power we’re after, politicians will come to us and beg.  And when we get to that point we won’t need them and we can give them the same answer they’ve given us all these years: FUCK YOU.

This is our world, our future.  Let’s take it back.