NOTA

That's short for "None Of The Above". There's a strange belief that if you don't vote, you shouldn't complain about political decisions, or that not voting forfeits your right to participate in political discourse; "You've had your chance to make your voice heard, you didn't take that chance, so don't complain and shut up!"

_{Image by Descrier - source: Flickr}

I have a problem with this attitude for several reasons, but I'll explain just one: it doesn't matter who wins, not really. As an example I'll use America, but this goes for most developed countries; I could make the same case for my own country, The Netherlands, or for Great Britain. There are differences between the political parties, sure, but ultimately none of them rule in favor of their people, and all of them rule in favor of the wealthy and powerful interest groups. Just as a "fun" experiment I searched Google with the term "policy in favor of the people", and here's the top 3 results: 1) U.S. Policies Favor The Wealthy, Interest Groups, Study Shows, 2) Report: Facebook's Content Rules 'Favor Elites And Government' Over Activists, People Of Color, and 3) OUR TAX LAWS FAVOR WEALTHY PEOPLE. JESUS PRIORITIZED THOSE IN POVERTY. That latter headline shows the hypocrisy of a country that claims to be Christian, but never asks "what would Jesus do?"

There have been many studies on the effects of political decision making and the outcome is always the same: the people almost never get what they want or need. Even here in social democracy ridden Europe this is true; we have it a lot better than our American counterparts, but our social safety nets and universal healthcare systems are under constant attack and slowly degrading, against the will of the working and middle class. When the growing number of non-voters is discussed in the mainstream media, we often hear that the decision to not vote comes from a position of privilege, that people who don't vote have it too good to ever have to worry about politics. This is not true, as is also explained in the below linked video: non-voters are overwhelmingly poor, working class and other marginalized groups, who have every reason to see things change. But they are also the same people who see election after election that it doesn't matter who wins, they are the ones who've lost all belief that their vote makes any difference.

So, no matter how much the mainstream media and ruling class want to claim that the Deep State doesn't exist, that it's just a baseless conspiracy theory, the masses of people who are clearly not represented by "their" political parties know better; they've for decades lived the fact that the Deep State is real. Using America as an example, it doesn't matter if the Democrats or the Republicans win, the CIA gets what it wants, the Pentagon gets what it wants, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft get what they want. The stupid and overblown "culture war" differences aside, there are no differences between the two parties and the things that really matter never change; foreign wars continue, domestic surveillance expands, the economy works for the rich, not the poor, healthcare makes billions for Big Pharma while citizens go bankrupt over medical bills... It's sad, but it's true: the Deep State rules...

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