Why I'm Moving On From This F#$king Election

As promised, my Vlog with the reasons besides my health that I'm moving on from the general election:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbTtL3R4l94]

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We are not a democracy. Our votes do not matter. The media is propagandized to a Goebbels level.
You are not alone being demoralized by this fucking election.
On top of that, you are unwell. I hope you can get your mind into some better place, and that eliminating stress will reap a health benefit to you.
I occasionally have a client say they have a process server trying to serve them with a lawsuit, what should they do? Well, the first step toward solving a problem is to thoroughly understand what it is, so get served! Let's read the petition, look for the proper response.
This election process has revealed the problem. We now see how the rich and powerful control our fakey election process. Maybe, no matter how demoralized we are, no matter how distraught we are, at least we know what we are facing, and we may yet come up with a plan to wrest control from them.
Trying to figure out some strategy on casting a vote is, at the end of the day, nothing more than personal gesture.
After November, we can all turn our energies towards a sorely needed revolution without the distraction of this fakey election.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

gulfgal98's picture

wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your vlog. I totally agree with your conclusions and the longer we all watch this charade, the harder it is for any of us, let alone someone with major health problems like you, to continue. The election is not worth damaging your already fragile health. I hope that this break from the elections and your medical treatments will help you to stabilize your health. Please take care of yourself first! Thank you again for all of your contributions, Steven.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

tapu dali's picture

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There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

And don't go back to BoomanTribune until after the election. It will tie your guts in a knot. Trust me!

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Agree with your thoughts, I am taking a very minimalist role in this General Election. No canvassing or phone banking this time. I will contribute to Jill and vote for her. Just to spite the oligarchy. I hope you we will hear from you, your writing and wisdom on other issues would be interesting.

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shaharazade's picture

add to your despair and anxiety. You care deeply as we all do. I vote but I am well aware of how rigged this farce of a democratic electoral system is. I used to think it was a RW coup but shortly after Obama was elected I realized it was a by-partisan coup.

The last thing someone with immune system health issues should do is immerse themselves in the hopeless and futile politics we're all facing. I appreciate the citizen investigative journalism you did on the primary debacle.

Find some joy and take care of yourself. Do not despair as people can and will find away to stop this global nightmare. I think that it will not come from USA politics. Maybe read some Chris Hedges who used to depress me but now I find hi writing consoling and hopeful. His and other writers outside the din of partisan politics open your mind to perspectives other then doing battle with the entrenched duopoly. Us not them. Take care.

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Steven D's picture

Pie fights happen.

If I had to pick one moment that really did it for me it was when I realized that Sanders' had no effective plan for continuing "our revolution." When he brought back Weaver to run "Our Revolution," rather than go with his younger, more in touch staffers, I knew he had unconditionally surrendered. Electing "Berniecrats" is just another twist on the old "More and better Democrats" line of bs Kos was selling back in the day.

Bernie has a good heart, but he is still playing by the old rule book. We have neither the time nor the money to keep playing by "their" rules.

We need to change the damn game.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

gulfgal98's picture

of whom I care very much. Both comments show me why we should all continue to have faith in one another. That is our strength.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

More "yes" to all the encouragement from others here to do whatever is necessary to improve your health.

And while I'm in an affirmative mood, a plug for Yes! magazine, full of stories of people the world over who are making a positive difference for themselves and others. It's a great antidote to a case of Bummed Out by Selection Charade 2016, a morale-booster for the demoralized: http://www.yesmagazine.org/

Take care of yourself.

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." --Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thaumlord-Exelbirth's picture

Bernie has a good heart, but he is still playing by the old rule book. We have neither the time nor the money to keep playing by "their" rules.

We need to change the damn game.

We haven't the money to compete with their endless wallets and accounts. We haven't the time to waste fixing things from within, when they work from within and without to delay and thwart attempts to fix things. With the exception of the amendment process, the rules are entirely in their favor. Perhaps our efforts would be best focused, for the time being, on expediting the current amendment process to get money out of politics. Aside from the benefits of starting to fix the rigging of the system against us, it will help unify the 99% of us, and that unification can bleed into other critical movements (movements which would benefit from less financial opposition, like climate change and police/justice reform).

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RantingRooster's picture

I have been in a major funk from all the research, discoveries, mind numbing epidemic of cognitive dissonance, fueled by our "media" generating a massive case of "willful suspension of disbelief" (why movies seem real sometimes) that seems to permeate the very fabric of our reality, despite the fact we KNOW reality, is very much different than what is being presented, discussed, debated etc...

Personally, the way this election season has shown our republic to be completely corrupted to the core, I'm voting for myself, or Jill Stein. I've quit writing as often about topics and I'm focusing more on local activism.

All this shit has made me more enraged Aggressive , but there not shit I can do nationally, so local politicians, 1%'ers, pouters etc.. your ass is in my "activists" cross hairs, because as OPOL used to say, "Because fuck this shit!"

Take care of yourself Steven. Need something, send me a msg.

RR Drinks

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

hester's picture

I've been thinking about the real disappointment I have felt and I think it's b/c of how much hope i had for so long. I put a lot of my energies into canvassing and phone banking and I felt and almost tasted the possibilities. Now what? These crooks??? No way.

My energies need to be elsewhere.

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Don't believe everything you think.

mimi's picture

why people fought for more presidential debates, including someone in the debates that they excluded or vice versa. These debates are useless and worthless.

All I prayed was that they just would stop all debates. What the heck is it worth to continue listening to them? Since the DNC killed Sanders election, it's over. Don't even try to deal with those who made the killing happening.

The time will pass, if you want it or not, one day the fucking elections are the past. Nothing has changed,

You restart to think about tweaking the fucking system to do some good for the people and be more fair. Eventually we will meet you then again. Unless it's totally worthless.

No way you let yourself dragged down into depression, despair or worsening health. You have done a lot, time to rest and time to take care of the people you love and being taken care of by them.

Hugs. Get well.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/02/hillary-clinton-s-team-...

think the wisest among us will step back, take care of ourselves and those close to us, and just see what happens. There really isn't much else we can do, and still stay sort of sane...

Good luck to us all....

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k9disc's picture

The Hippies were Right!

One of the things that has been the most infuriating, and probably the most emotionally unhealthy thing for most of us here on this site, is knowing that the information was out there.

We know what's going on. We know how it's going to go down in the future. We have all been fairly prophetic over the last decade -- I know, quite well, most all of the Essayists here and all of us have been "on it" in some fashion the whole time. And the tip of the intellectual spear is getting sharper. Look at Bernie's campaign. That sat upon the shoulders of all of us DFHs. It should be a heady, confidence inspiring experience, but it's not.

... Because we know what's happening.

Look at the electorate. We know what's happening too. Of course, we don't have similar solutions on both sides of the aisle, but many of the problems are clearly understood.

The problem is that the corporate media is about creating confusion. The days of crafting and controlling an Establishment narrative are gone -- those bytes left the router ten years ago. A few years of corporate media cliffhanging -- "Can the Establishment survive the new media landscape?" -- where they tried to hang on to crafting and controlling the narrative, and then it hit them:

Too much data means that reality is fungible. The emotional and social biases of our filter bubbles are easy to manipulate. It's better to confuse and enflame than to misinform and direct.

So here we are.

I guess my point is that we can, and should, become prophets. It's what I do to make lemonade out of lemons with hopeless dog training situations.

I narrate the session for the client and predict where it will go,"...and in about 3 seconds he'll lie down..." And the dog downs on 3.

It's super powerful stuff from a persuasion (and sales, blech) standpoint. It allows you to save face and turn failure into success. And one of the best things is that it teaches you to read and respond to key situations in a successful or least damaging manner.

I think we can, and, in many ways, do this, but I don't think it's a conscious or concerted focus. If we sharpen up the stick a bit and maintain our focus on the soft underbelly or a fortuitously placed eyeball we might just do some damage to the roiling beast.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Bollox Ref's picture

Can't say I blame you. The Friday FBI revelations just have me floored.

Nothing seems to be able to sink that Titanic Class disaster, The SS Hillary.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Not just one item. 2 items. lost in the mail.
Caerus, how many packages have you lost in the mail?
Clinton can't afford a courier?
Fucking election.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

coz i'm hoping to hear from you soon. You have made a huge difference! Got me to sign up here, e.g.. So while I totally support your stepping back, I hope you will still post videos from time to time. I also have a blankty blank au disease (should have picked other parents, what was I thinking?), and know the crash times well. But as you know, you will, eventually, get the beast under control again. Big warm hugs! Can't wait to hear what you'll be thinking of next

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I would say that if Bernie was elected president he could have done alot just with the power of the Executive. For example, he could have appointed an aggressive DOJ head to jail the banksters. Appoint aggressive regulatory agency leaders. Withdrew from Afghanistan.

That being said, he also would have have enormous resistance from the dem and gop establishment. The dem establishment would try to do to him, what neoliberal Labour Party leaders have tried to do against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. The mass media would have turned on Bernie in the worst way.

Same would have happened in many ways to Ron Paul. Follow up on his anti-war message, and Mitch and Reid would have shat in their collective pants.

But this primary and now general election is the worse one in my over 43 years of continuous voting. First, Bernie was cheated. And in the face of that Clinton supporters are asking for nothing short of loyalty oaths and acceptance of every shit policy she advocates (no that the phony ones on some website, but the policies as formed by her actions and history).

I don't think that Sander supporters who will vote Hillary for party unity realize that Hillary is engaging in an ideological purge of whatever remains of the Left in the party. The whole thing about a progressive Dem platform was utter bullshit as many people on the Sander's side engaged in the formation of the platform clearly came to understand.

One of thee best articles on this I read was a recent article in Commondreams.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/01/courting-right-smearing-lef...

Another thing that was also essential in my leaving the democratic party was the utter attempt to smear Bernie supporters with the most vile of attacks.

"Throughout the 2016 Democratic primary, left-wing critics of Hillary Clinton, including Bernie Sanders, were repeatedly smeared as racists, sexists, and class-reductionists — or some combination of the three — by surrogates of the former Secretary of State, and by the former Secretary of State, herself.

Clinton and her team, for instance, accused Sanders of making everything "about an economic theory," claimed that "black lives don't matter much to Bernie Sanders," and attempted to paint Sanders as someone who "perpetuates sexist and misogynistic stereotypes."

Nastiness in presidential primaries, of course, is nothing new. What was unique about this year, however, was the virtual unanimity with which the Democratic Party apparatus placed its weight on the scale in Hillary Clinton's favor.

And prominent figures within the so-called liberal media were happy to pile on. It was repeatedly implied by the pro-Clinton commentariat that the campaign of Bernie Sanders represented little more than a left-wing version of the Trump phenomenon: We were told by such luminaries as Joan Walsh that Sanders derived his support primarily from white males looking to reassert themselves in a rapidly diversifying society. Walsh warned that if Sanders continued his attacks on the Democratic Party and its standard-bearer, he risked becoming not the leader of a mass progressive movement, but "the messiah of an angry, heavily white, and male cult."

This meme was totally re-enforced in the major pro-dem websites. After years of party loyalty, this is what it came down to? And what does the Hillary faithful do when she picks the very person the Walsh's ranted against? A white guy who failed upward in 2010 who oversaw massive Dem loses.

And we get the sight of the mothers of African Americans killed by police at the convention. And now found out, DNC told candidates told to ignore and marginalize BLM which is at its core an anti-police violence movement against African Americans. But the racist Bernie supporters didn't think that black lives mattered?

Too many lines crossed by the Hillary controlled democratic party. Time to rest up and get ready next year for the coming wars Hillary will lead us into.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

I also gave up trying to explain what's going on to Hillary's faithful because they're too heavily invested in the false Hillary v. Trump narrative to give a shit.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Bob In Portland's picture

The propaganda streams that are directed towards liberals is much more effective than liberals understand. More effective than what they can comprehend. They don't understand that there is a game being played on them. This is the most demoralizing lesson for me.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

I agree wholeheartedly with you. You have given so much of yourself, we all support you 100%. We need you to be healthy. We all need to stay healthy. It appears the worst might be yet to come. Sad

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

We are in the downward spiral of a downward vortex and there isn't a damn thing I can do but prepare for the death of everything I know and cherish. Can't fight, can't flee, can't tread water.

As Shiz said, come on by just to shoot the breeze. No need to write or record anything. No need to fight the fight. You can just laugh at those of us that are still getting suckered in until our brains engage again.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

LamontCranston's picture

Getting caught up in the world of politics isn't worth harming one's health. Take a break, and enjoy life's other far more interesting adventures.

Peace.

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"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - Howard Zinn

Zenza's picture

Even without health problems. I see no yard signs and very few bumper stickers this election season. PEN keeps sending emails pleading with people to request ANY bumper stickers...Even TRUMP THE FRAUD isn't "selling." I'll bet the "winner" of this election will have the lowest % of votes ever, and the only ones who will watch the sham debates are those hoping for a Trump reality show. Time to narrow our focus and rebuild from the ground up. THX for all your vlogs. Hope to see some on other topics.

Edited to repair autocorrect.

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I must be the only person buying stuff this election, and I never did before.

Bernie signs, bumper stickers.

Jill stein signs, bumper stickers.

Nope & noper sign & bumper stickers.

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Daenerys's picture

LOL! I hadn't heard of that one yet so I Google-image'd it. Lol I have become quite disengaged myself but voting for Stein because I at least won't hate myself for voting for her even if she doesn't get enough votes to matter. I am depressed with Utah, and their smear tactics against Stein continue to work. Sad

@Steven thank you for your vlogs/essays. Please take care.

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This shit is bananas.

Zenza's picture

Sorry for the acronym.
As an addendum to my comment above, it seems from the many pleading emails from which I have attempted to unsubscribe that many (most?)fundraising efforts are at a virtual standstill except for the 1%.

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Thanks for all the great stuff you've provided here.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

is losing steam. There is no activity, no enthusiasm.
I would hate to see this horrible election kill off lively participation here.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

k9disc's picture

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

karl pearson's picture

Thanks for all the research you have done to provide us with informative and caring essays. It's time for a break from this mockery of democracy election and concentrate on other issues. I am also disengaged from this election, which is best summed up by "nope and noper". Both parties are blowing up so just enjoy the firecracker of a show that will result.

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Lenzabi's picture

Steve, I hear ya and feel ya. Bad health needs to be paid attention to. You have fought a hard fight and deserve a rest from the BS we have all been seeing. You have done plenty enough., not worth killing yourself over.

I too am sick, tired and pissed off as all hell over the nonsense we are getting shoved down our throats but I will vote Jill not Hill all the way. I also have to watch my health as I had some ok news and not so okay news, and am trying a new medication for one of my laundry list of ills.

The Progressives need to work hard and fight back against the Empire that is run by the Corporate States of Oligarchia, the nation that usurped democracy from us all years ago, and attempts to instill us with fear as they justify the unending wars to showcase the MIC toys we pay for.

Do what you must for as long as you must, just check in every now and then Brother.

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So long, and thanks for all the fish