Boycott the Election?

Jim Kavanaugh argues that the proper response to the awful mainstream choices we have in the 2024 election would be an organized boycott of the election. 

But there is no such boycotting organization, and without it blasting out the corresponding rhetoric, up to 60% participation personal boycotts can simply be dismissed as "apathy."  That is why I have argued in numerous previous posts that the correct response to this election is to vote for one of the 3 or more anti-Genocide Presidential candidates available in your state (Stein, West, De La Cruz, and the SEP which I just learned about).  That sends the specific message you may have if like me much of your rage comes from the Genocide of Palestinians being supported by both mainstream candidates with great exhuberance.  

Generally speaking, however, I think it's better to vote for Democrats in other races, except for the really bad extra pro-Israel ones like Fetterman.

CPUSA supports maximum participation in the election and voting against tyranny and fascism.  By previous statements and implications this seems to mean voting for Democrats.  However, the actual statement only refers to a "united front" and "progressive candidates" and does not specifically mention Democrats or Republicans.  This statement was hammered out at the recent CPUSA convention.  Although I don't think this was the plurality intent, it could be interpreted as a call to vote for any party which opposes fascism, etc., including "third parties."

As if to specifically dispel that notion, another CPUSA article (not a voted resolution) blasting West as someone serving far right interests while campaigning to the left of other candidates.  But this is not a resolution, it is a statement from a CPUSA member which, though enshrined at the organization website, represents only his personal opinion rather than party "guidance."

The failure of CPUSA to adequately critique the Democratic Party is one thing that has been making me rethink my membership in the organization, but I'm sticking with it for now anyway (and NOT joining one of the fake alternatives).

No one has yet explained to me why the CPUSA chose to run Communist Presidential Candidates until 1988, and then started organizing members to support the Democratic Party.  Well, I know why, it was the position taken by the majority of representatives at the CPUSA Convention.  But it was not guided by Marxist-Leninist theory, which didn't suddenly change around 1988.  Either position could be argued to be consistent with Marxist-Leninist theory.

And it probably made a big difference that the CPSU stopped supporting CPUSA around then too.  That support made fielding independent Communist candidates at all levels more possible.

Active third parties are the only form of 'party discipline' available to citizens of USA, since we have top down corporatist parties which basically shill for the candidates most attractive to big donors.  It may still only be worth voting for major parties for the lesser evil, if the even lesser evil hasn't also gone beyond the pale, as now.

Discipline comes precisely from the fact that third parties, if they gain support among people who usually support majority parties, threaten those parties.  That is precisely how FDR was pushed (by competition from Communists, Socialists, and Huey Long) to do the New Deal, otherwise he could have been a fairly conservative President.

Third Parties, or a comparable means of internal party discipline, are an essential part of a Democratic system, especially a winner-take-all system, and especially with corporatist parties who only serve the public as little as they can get away with.

By these "beyond the pale" standards, which Democrats would I have voted for?  It looks like all of them for the first term and none for the second.  Every Democrat since Kennedy did sufficient 'beyond the pale' things as to be not re-electable in my book, starting with Johnson, who created a false-flag attack to justify sending millions of US troops to fight democracy in Vietnam (and I could go on from there).

Until now, when Harris, who was duly recommended by Biden himself, has put no distance between her policies and his with regards to the ongoing genocide and proxy wars, even when demanded to put forward such differences by critical constituents, such as Michigan Muslims, instead silencing them, and "stopping disinformation" (which all too often means stopping valid criticism, and always means limiting freedom of speech) has become a Democratic Party rallying cry.

McCarthyism Eternal

After reading this McCarthyist article, blasting Cornel West for association with anti-imperial and communist groups in a recent antiwar rally, I have decided again to vote for West.  It appears that Green Party did not attend the rally, but West and PSL did, which I think shows more courage.  Meanwhile, Green Party candidate Jill Stein was interviewed on cable TV, and did a respectable job, until she felt compelled to send a note of corrections the next day explicitly condemning Putin and Assad (but also US Presidents).  Many in antiwar circles, including me, found that sort of condemnation of US official enemies to be offensive (though others have often failed to mention that she also condemned US Presidents, which makes it somewhat less so).

So it seems that indeed Cornel West and Claudia De La Cruz (PSL) which both attended the ANSWER Coalition conference with Medea Benjamin, are positioning them to the anti-imperial and anti-war side of the spectrum, which is where I am.

Strategic Uncertainty becomes Strategic Certainty

 US recognized that Taiwan was part of China 50 years ago.

But then created a policy of 'strategic uncertainty' meaning they might protect Taiwan if violence were used for assimilation.

New proposed law would make turn this into strategic certainty, in effect, making Taiwan a defacto NATO member.

This is very much like what was done with Ukraine, and led to war with Russia.  Although, unlike Ukraine, the US recognized (as does the world) that Taiwan is part of China.  So it's even worse.

When empires take great interest in the fate of islands and other features near geopolitical rivals, it's not because of their concern for human rights. 

Taiwan has been used as a base for foreign invaders of China many times before.

https://x.com/DrHK88/status/1845704185544585228

The almost infinite improbability of casting a decisive vote

As far as making a difference on the outcome of an election (let alone policy) the probability, say, for a Texan voting in the Presidential election of 2024, even by the most generous calculation (which I strongly dispute on many grounds), which I'll call Chamberlain & Rothschild 1980) the probability is far less than for being struck by lighting in any particular year (not your lifetime risk, which is many times higher).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022053181900223

This calculation was the leading one suggested by google and this reference, from which the academic publisher will grudgingly let you view and download the first page.  From that first page, we learn that the probability of casting a decisive vote (basically assuming everything is random, no rigidities or tendencies or correlations) is 1 / N, where N is the number of voters.  This sounds too simple, but it actually comes from a very impressive application of probability mathematics (I was a student and practitioner myself and I recognize it as such, with all the usual funny symbols).  About 9 million voters voted for President in Texas in 2016, so to keep it to round numbers we'll say 10 million might be expected to vote in 2024.  That means that your probability of casting a decisive vote in Texas would be estimated as:

1 / 10,000,000

The probability of being struck by lighting in any one year is about 10 times that, or around 1 in 1,000,000

Are odds like that worth sullying your self respect by voting for a (likely or proven) war monger, etc, because he/she's the lesser of two evils? 

I don't think so.  They're not worth getting out of bed.  What is worth getting out of bed is satisfying your soul.  So you might as well just vote your conscience or even your feelings, which will show up in the official results, and suggest to everyone the kinds of things YOU would like to see, and which your votes might be on offer for.  Will that change anything?  Probably not, but it probably wouldn't anyway, and it could make you feel better, and less dissociated, more connected with your real feelings, which is one of the big things we need to fight for today.

Now I personally believe the Chamberlain & Rothschild 1980 estimate is far too generous in cases where there is are strong pre-existing political alignments and correlations.  I personally felt the probability of casting a decisive vote in the Presidential election in Texas to be more like 1 in a quadrillion because of the low probability of the Texas of today going to 50% for a Democrat.  It's not random, it's strongly aligned to Republicans, right now and for the foreseeable future.

I think any useful look at these things has to include the 'prevailing winds' of existing political biases.  So I start from some vote, which could be the vote of 2016 (which didn't follow a pandemic so I think is more representative).  Trump won that election by in Texas by about 800,000 votes out of about 9,000,000 votes cast.

Starting from the final outcome (that final outcome, because we don't have the current one) and working back to a tie vote which you would cast the deciding vote on, 800,000 votes would have to change (assuming they come from otherwise non-voters or 3rd party voters).  For each change of one vote, it could change backwards or forwards.  Requiring it to change in a desired direction therefore happens at about 1/2 the probability of a desired change.  (Technically there are vast possibilities either way, but roughly equal either way too.)  So, requiring 800,000 votes to change in a desired direction would happen at:

1 / (2 ** 800,000)  

Read as 1 over 2 to the 800,000th power.

I can't get anything I have to calculate that number it is so small.  Roughly estimating 3 powers of 2 for each 10, it approximates to 1 / (10 ** 300,000), or 1 in 3000 googols.

Now, I'll freely admit, that estimate is too far out.  I think the truth is somewhere in between the Chamberlain and Rothschild 1980 estimate and mine.  My guess of 1 in a quadrillion still sounds about right to me, given the polarized politics of Texas, etc (and I'd note that it's only a squaring of Chamberlain and Rothschild 1980, which assumes no political tendencies at all).  But the best calculation I've come up that includes the pre-existing polarization suggests it's far smaller than even 1 in a quadrillion

I'm pretty confident I will not be so unlucky as having failed to cast the decisive vote in Texas in 2024, even by the Chamberlain and Rothschild 1980 calculation.

Now, Texas *could* be the 'swing state' if in fact it actually swung towards Democrats.  This is not astronomically improbable  because shit happens, it's just very very unlikely.  But suppose shit happens, and Texas voted for the Democrat.  In such a "shit happening" scenario, most likely many other states would swing towards Democrats also, and then the Texas vote wouldn't be necessary in the final tabulation.  So the greater probability is that even if your vote in the 1/10^7 - 1/18^7 probability were to swing Texas, it still wouldn't be a swing vote in the US Electoral college, because in that case Texas most likely could have gone either way and it still wouldn't make a difference.

(BTW, that Texas would switch most likely along with many other states is a typical example of correlation which is too often assumed to be unimportant in probabilistic analysis.)

To swing the US presidential election, you need to be The Swing Voter (changing it from tie to win) in The Swing State.  When it's astronomically (or at least mega) improbable just to be The Swing Voter in any state!

So the effect of the Electoral College is to make it even more improbable to be a swing voter in the Presidential election than in any state, or if there were a pure popular vote election in the whole country.

So all the rationalistic talk about consequences, etc, of your vote are bollocks (and in many policies, like support of Israel's genocide, it doesn't even matter who is President!).

Voting is primarily a feel good exercise in which you can voice your feelings and group identification.  "I'm with these people." or, "I'm not with any of these people."

It's far more a tool to make people feel they own the policies of government, than for the people to determine the policies of government.  The doctrine that you must vote for the lesser evil party (because consequences) is primarily a prod to push your mind into accepting those policies and downplaying any full throated critique.

Iran: Empire comes back to bite

Iran is one of the world's oldest countries, older even than China.

Iran pioneered monotheism with Zoroastrianism.  When they released Jews from Babylonian captivity was when Judaism also became monotheistic, inspired by Zoroastrianism.  The Hebrew religion(s) had not been monotheistic.  That was editing that occurred during exile, fundamentally reformulating the essence of Judaism, and bringing it into alignment with the Iranian empire it became part of.

Cyrus I was a visionary multicultural emperor.  But he must have also seen releasing the Jews as creating a stronghold of allies in the Levant so that his son, Cyrus II, could conquer Egypt.  So his reason for re-establishing the Temple of Jerusalem with the formerly exiled Hebrew elite now called "Jews" was fundamentally geopolitical.

You could say, Cyrus was a pioneer of creating vassal states, though what Cyrus funded was not a vassal state so much as just...a Temple, centering a region in the Iranian empire.  So it was an empire based on vassal elites though not "states" as such (which weren't really a thing much until modern times).  But it was an approximation to that with the organizations of the time.

Now the tables are turned.  Iran itself is threatened because of what we might call post-Imperial expansion.  Empire, which was a concept Iran once pioneered, is now biting back through descendants from the very movement Iran once enabled for its empire.

In a way, sadly, this seems like the saying no good deed goes unpunished.  Iranians funded the Second Temple, and created the imperial Pax Irani that it peacefully operated under for quite awhile, and now they face terror and worse from the descendants of those they freed and protected.  

Jerusalem and The Second Temple were simply operated by the chief priests, it was a theocracy because the priests knew Jewish history well enough to abhor the idea of kings and all that, not to mention the Iranians didn't want it either, and under their watch the scriptural requirements for a Jewish State were the earthly appearance of Almighty God in "the Messiah."

Things were not so nice under the next empire that replaced the Iranians, and after that was defeated a Jewish State did appear for 80 years under the Maccabees, without the appearance of the Messiah.  It was a terror, when the Maccabees conquered the areas that current Israelis seem to be seeking, they force converted adult males to Judaism with circumcision.  It was so bad that ultimately the priests begged the Romans for something different, and as a result Judea got King Herod under Pax Romana.   As if to make up for the fact that he wasn't actually an ethnic Jew, King Herod built the final incredibly massive version of the Second Temple, but he also bred a lot of dissent in the extended area that was now allocated to Judea.   The Apostle Paul we know was a suitor to the Herodian court.

Finally the Herodian dynasty led to years of revolts. They started as Jew vs Jew, and not long after the assassination of James, the brother of Jesus who may have been christian (though probably not by modern definitions) but was also a Jew as was Jesus.  Finally the Romans came in, and with large loss of troops, they sacked Jerusalem, and tens of thousands of Jews fled, accompanied by more over time as the Romans introduced new laws.  An attempt to restore the Kingdom of Judea by force again was tried by Bar Kochba in 135.  This time, he claimed to be the Messiah.  It failed, and the rabbis then universally claimed he was NOT the Messiah.  The ultimate expression of first millennia Judaism by the rabbis, the Talmud, contains the Three Oaths against creating a Jewish State without the Messiah.

Religious Zionism first appeared when the full text of the Bible was printed by Luther.  It was Christian Zionism.  "Jewish" political Zionism was created by an atheist of Russian Jewish descent, Hertzl, and the first conference was held in 1895.  Most Jews did not become Zionist until the 1960's, when there were popular movies such as Exodus promoting the Zionist cause.  The Holocaust was certainly an inflection point, but German Jews died in death camps after years of turning down opportunities to move to Palestine, because they were committed to living in Germany.  Most Jews in the world wanted to stay where they were and saw Zionism as the work of anti-semites to get them to go somewhere else.  The one and only Jew in the British Cabinet voted against the Balfour Declaration.

As if to repeat the Iranian experience, the US "recognized" the entity that was created in a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians known as the Nakba.  800,000 Palestinians were driven out of Palestine completely, paving the way for a Jewish majority state with "democracy" (which is oxymoronic under such circumstances).

It had been part of the British plan to both control the middle east through a western proxy, AND to enlist US help in WW1 with Jewish support (Brandeis was a friend of Wilson).  To this day the Zionist Entity continues to operate as a western proxy.  Ever since its creation, it has helped destroy pan-Arabism (and, even worse from US perspective, pan-Arab-Communism).  It creates the instability and anti-democratic forces which help keep corrupt pro-American Arab dictatorships (often hated by most in the country except for their own massive ruling families), who have been continuously kept within the US geopolitical sphere.

But few knowledgeable observers don't see that the era of US global hegemony is ending if not already over.  This super-empire (neo-colonial) was clearly doomed to fail from its beginnings in the aftermath of World War II, when imperialists gained the upper hand in the relatively unscathed USA.  But now it is in its dying phase, lashing out with it's last gasp against competitor Russia in Ukraine, and unleashing the full demonic power of Zionism in the middle east.  The Zionism which was once enabled, as Judaism, by Iran's monotheism, but now simplified (need not wait for messiah, establish no state, not bear false witness, not steal, not murder, not have other gods, love neighbors, heal the world, etc) into pure national supremacism.

Cats have it right.  They've had a behaviorally sustainable system for tens of millions of years.  The human civilization we know has barely persisted for 11,000 years so far.

Cats refuse any help from others in their fights.  It's purely one on one or it doesn't count.  That's sustainable.

Empires, allies, client states, and everything of that kind are doomed to failure.  And when they fail, there may be flailing that results in world war, which looks like what we are seeing now.

Time, Space, Ergodicity, Reducibility, and God

Mind bending memes and analysis (if you're willing).

The 'Library of Babel' is an interesting meme similar to many I've thought of but more accessible than most.

I'll have to think about it some more, but it occurs to me that the infinity of possible symbolic constructions (eg present and future books) is not something "of this world."  If it exists enough to make this meaningful, the Library of Babel is immortal, and therefore every book in it as well.  And then if every book, then every author, every reader, etc, as well, I pondered in a previous essay.

However we do have present books, and they are something of this world.  As long as there are writers, more will be created, and some will be lost.

There's a huge gap between what we understand as 'material world' and structuring principles, numbers, memes, books, and so on, which appear as though they could be immortal.

Following the above essay, that immortality seems to arise precisely from their reducibility, which things in the material world (including us) don't seem to have.

Voting to Save Democracy

If you must vote just one way in order to Save Democracy, then of course you don't presently have the thing you are claiming to try to save, because Democracy involves choices...not just one choice.

Pondering this at long length this year, I've decided to make a break from my previous Marxist-Leninist teleological approach (and you can check out People's World today from my sidebar and see how curiously they support Biden unconditionally yet oppose many of his policies usually without mentioning him).

Though I'd framed myself since 2001 as a loyal Democrat and as such I even worked as a Precinct Captain until the Texas Democratic Caucus Disasters of 2008 and other crapola led me to conclude I'd served my time.  But I continued to attend some Senate District meeting, enough to go to the Texas State Democratic convention in 2016, making the second Convention I'd attended...

All this has led me to believe that political "parties" in the USA are basically fake.  At the bottom they are filled with aparatchiks from every organized special interest, along with rather few concerned but also usually very naive citizens who generally only follow the good news about their "party".  But the whole apparatus is really run from the top, like an unending corporate pep rally the higher you get.  At the State Convention, you can squabble in pretty much ignored special sessions, but then the big wigs put on a media blitz to make you completely numb and uncritically accept the current crop of corporate politicians.

So really it's run by the politicians, who themselves are run by the powers that be, the Plutocrats and Oligarchs.

There's hardly any good reason to participate in such a farce, though I suppose if you have the stomach for endless frustration, you can be a nice Mr Smith as much as you dare and can squeeze in to the dialog, though it will be promptly forgotten.  A few people may hear you briefly.

Electoral Politics isn't really politics at all, it's a vast machine run by the real powers to make people feel good.  And if they can steer you into one of the only potentially winning choices, which are both predetermined to be acceptable to the powers that be, so much the better.  Ultimately it's a mind control system, making you feel like you "own" the mostly horrible decisions the powers that be are making, at least if "your" party got into power this cycle (though in many areas, especially defense and foreign policy which is the federal government's #1 role, little change is on offer and little change is observed).

As many say, if voting made any difference, they'd make it illegal.

What to do under such circumstances?

Some opt for not voting.  For not participating in this sham system.

I see nothing immoral or illogical in that.  But it's indistinguishable from apathy, from not being political at all, for not caring about what society does.  It is not clearly communicating that this system sucks, and how it sucks in particular.  It's an expression of your feelings, but possibly not the most intelligible one.

I've come to the belief that, the best thing to do is to not vote tactically at all, but to simply vote for whoever or whatever you actually believe in.  Whoever best represents your POV.  Isn't that what you are supposed to be able to do in voting?  The results, they hardly matter anyway.  It's a system problem if those feelings aren't properly communicated to the powers that be, not yours.  To your own self be true!

Sadly, once again, those results may not be intelligible if you do not vote for either a listed candidate or a certified write-in.  But that covers a broad spectrum in many cases, far less restricted than the Duopoly.  In Texas I can vote for Jill Stein as a listed candidate, and Cornel West and Claudia De La Cruz as certified write-ins, all of whom are fine people and would not continue the genocide.  Voting my feelings I have a glut of choices.

Voting your true feelings may feel especially correct where there is a large moral dimension involved, such as participating in a mass murder, war crime, or genocide.  Even if the alternative likely-to-win candidate also promises to do so, it is not morally as bad as doing it right now in deontological ethics.

People would readily grasp this if they were asked to vote for someone who just murdered their entire family, in order to "save democracy."

Real politics is changing people's minds.  Real politics is showing people things they did not know.  Real politics is speaking out for positive ends at every opportunity.  Real politics is thinking about and doing something about the future other than trying to get another corporate candidate elected.  It's barely worth voting at all, but when you do, it's fine that it be an accurate representation of what you actually believe, that is to say, real politics.

****

I still do recommend, both tactically and for real merit (in a few cases), voting for Democrats in the Congressional races.  That's where there is some possibility of making a difference, though still not much.  And this is unless you have a particularly outspoken pro-Genocide candidate, like Fetterman.  It's fine to send the worst back to the farm.

Likewise, voters in swing states, where the election might end up being decided by mere hundreds of votes, might upweight the importance of voting tactically for the lesser evil.  There is still no moral or logical reason to need to do so.  You, the voter, are not really wielding the power.  You are registering your thoughts and feelings to the system, which reframes the illusion according to such results.