Chris Hedges: "In this year’s presidential election I will vote for a third-party candidate"
By Chris Hedges
<...>
Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick-Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. You won’t hear it on the corporate-owned airwaves and cable networks, including MSNBC, which has become to the Democratic Party what Fox News is to the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. You won’t hear it on NPR or PBS. You won’t read about it in our major newspapers. The issues that matter are being debated, however, on “Democracy Now!,” Link TV, The Real News, Occupy websites and Revolution Truth. They are being raised by journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. You can find genuine ideas in corners of the Internet or in books by political philosophers such as Sheldon Wolin. But you have to go looking for them.
Voting will not alter the corporate systems of power. Voting is an act of political theater. Voting in the United States is as futile and sterile as in the elections I covered as a reporter in dictatorships like Syria, Iran and Iraq. There were always opposition candidates offered up by these dictatorships. Give the people the illusion of choice. Throw up the pretense of debate. Let the power elite hold public celebrations to exalt the triumph of popular will. We can vote for Romney or Obama, but Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil and Bank of America and the defense contractors always win. There is little difference between our electoral charade and the ones endured by the Syrians and Iranians. Do we really believe that Obama has, or ever had, any intention to change the culture in Washington?
In this year’s presidential election I will vote for a third-party candidate, either the Green Party candidate or Rocky Anderson, assuming one of them makes it onto the ballot in New Jersey, but voting is nothing more than a brief chance to register our disgust with the corporate state. It will not alter the configurations of power. The campaign is not worth our emotional, physical or intellectual energy.
Our efforts must be directed toward acts of civil disobedience, to chipping away, through nonviolent protest, at the pillars of established, corporate power. The corporate state is so unfair, so corrupt and so rotten that the institutions tasked with holding it up—the police, the press, the banking system, the civil service and the judiciary—have become vulnerable. It is becoming harder and harder for the corporations to convince its foot soldiers to hold the system in place.
- more -
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thank_you_for_standing_up_20120123/
= new reply since forum marked as read
What a revolutionary act...I mean...voting for the Green Candidate...how'd that work out in 2000?
Moron.
much more legitimate than those awarded to presidents who pull us out of wars. Tsk. Tsk. 
Nothing really to add. I'd still vote Obama, although if Mitt wins, there is even less of a difference to show for it. ObamaCare and RomneyCare are six of one, half a dozen of the other. Obama has already shown he isn't as progressive as his primary declarations implied, and probably Mitt isn't as teaparty as some of his more extreme declarations have implied.
It more about voting for the candidates overlords and the influence they weld on them. Democrats and Obama are bought out, but still have a few reps left with a shred of moral dignity and also have some kind of historical pedigree, since FDR at least, to if not influence their positions, then perhaps to at least shame them into doing what is right. The Rethugs are 100% corporate tools where servicing the 1% is the only goal.
And hey if you can have the last word in a sub-thread with ProSense, your doing something right! 
Oh man, that was a good one!
No, the reaction will be "Chris Bad! Democrats Smash! Grrrrrr!" A deeper examination of what Hedges is saying and a discussion about some of the whys and wherefores isn't going to happen at DU as currently constituted. But we can definitely look forward to all the posts crowing about the total vindication of the Obama administration when the general election results come back in November, and be treated to four more years of "Never mind what happened, pay attention to the wonderful-sounding words!"
I've forgotten.
And I'm wondering if just mentioning these diseases in a thread about a "progressive" will get the reply alerted upon and hidden by a jury because of the perception that some untouchable person has been slighted by NYC_SKP.
The way a reply I had about Harry Belafonte was alerted upon and removed by a jury.
Too fuckin' funny.
1980, 1984, 1988, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010: For the worse
1992, 1996, 2006, 2008: For the better
2012:
Might as well write STUPID on his forehead and sit him on a stool with a dunce cap on his head.
In one paragraph he says ...
That statement is nonsense on its own ... but then he says that he WILL VOTE.
If voting is futile and sterile, why vote at all??
Or is that his real message ... that its not worth our emotional, physical or intellectual energy?.
So stay home.
Just like it's your right to post it here so he can get flamed. . Just like it's my right to laugh at both of you.
