90 Million Americans Wandering in a Limbo of Complacent Despondence.
Nha Trang, Vietnam, December 16th, 2024.
Salaroche

What can we think about the American electorate’s hope for the future of their own country when, in a highly consequential election such as was that of November 5th, there was a much larger number of votes left uncast than those cast for each of the candidates?

There was an invisible third-party candidate in these past presidential elections, the one who won the popular vote by a margin of over 10 million votes over those that Harris and Trump got. And the name of that candidate was “F*** you Democrats! F*** you Republicans! F*** you Electoral College! F*** you Campaign Finance laws!" (see link below).

There is also a subtext to that invisible candidate’s pseudophilosophy that can be best expressed in the questions “how much more myopic can I be about the future of my country?” and “how much blinder to reality can my American-innate complacency turn me?”

The United States is a huge country, the No. 4 in the world in terms of geographical size, after the Russian Federation, No.1, Canada, No.2, and China, No. 3, so it is understandable that most Americans conceive their country as their sole, all-encompassing world and reality.

This is particularly so given the unrivaled power American culture and America’s military and economic might exert over the rest of the world. So, it is also understandable that most Americans are compelled to embrace the idea that “no country is in any sense better than mine”, which, with some obvious exceptions, could be taken as true.

However, there is a serious problem in embracing that idea, as along with it comes the dubious, quite likely even subconscious belief that America is an indestructible nation where nothing can go really wrong, particularly as it pertains to the domestic stability of the country.

And it is in embracing such ideas that those 90 million Americans failed to see the vital national importance of the vote they refused to cast in November. They failed, even miserably so, to foresee the dire consequences the country will face in the coming years as a result of those elections.

I understand the Maga vote. I entirely disagree with it, but I understand it. It is just an irrational expression of frustration for the wrong path the country is currently embarked upon, mixed with good doses of xenophobia, racism, and white-supremacism, all of it propelled and misguided by a strong authoritarian, even Fascist dark energy. So, if somebody voted Maga in November, at least I have a good idea why they did it.

The same goes for those who, like me, voted Democrat. I know that many of us voted for Harris just as an attempt to keep Trump out of power. I did perceive her as possessing an acceptable-enough degree of honesty and sincerity, even as I know that she’s as highly compromised and beholden to big capital as most, if not all, elected Democrats and Republicans are, but, in my clearest of perceptions, I saw her just as a “NOT TRUMP” individual, which for me was more than enough to vote for her.

Obviously, neither the blind Maga rationale, nor my reasons to vote for Harris enticed any of those 90 million Americans to vote along either line, so, what on Earth was the overpowering force that made them abstain from voting? What was it that made them fail to foresee the consequences of their abdicating one of their most essential responsibilities as American citizens?

Americans who abstained from voting give a few different reasons for doing so but, in my view, all those reasons are encapsulated in one: They abstained misguided by a mistaken complacency, an irresponsible indolence, an unpatriotic despondence grounded on the misconceived notion that America will always be the best country in the world and that nothing on Earth, particularly not one presidential candidate or another, will ever have the power to bring it down.

Times have changed and, in America, quite drastically so. The outmoded idea that everything will stay the same regardless of what party wins the elections no longer applies to our current reality. That idea might have invariably applied up until 2016, but not anymore. It might have also applied if the Democrats had won in November, but they didn’t.

The Republican Party that won this year is not even a shadow of the party that won in 1980 and 1984. Whoever keeps expecting those guys to perpetuate the system of government that has until now prevailed in the country are soon going to have a very rude awakening.

America desperately needs to wake up from such noxious, overextended slumbers. Large numbers of Americans will need to undergo a quick, deep period of self-critical introspection with a view to tracing a brand-new path forward, for if they don’t, the Republic will most certainly fall.

America’s invulnerability, particularly in reference to the deadly threat its domestic enemies currently present to it, can no longer be taken as the unequivocal, irrevocable, everlasting status quo.

The American Democratic Experiment CAN and WILL fail if great numbers of Americans continue taking our Democratic Republic for granted to the point of not even caring to vote in crucial Presidential elections.

Not voting will never be a way to show that you care for your country.  ---- To read a detailed article that elaborates on the subject, please click here.

Salaroche