Why I Don't Vote

I've just learned lately that someone vowed that she would register to become a Republican voter.  For a long period of time, this middle-class individual has been leaning toward Republican's conservative ideology.  Further influenced now by a local radical right-wing conservative talk show host, she is now motivated to vote in the elections.

I have heard enough from both parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, that I should vote to make my voice heard.  Living in San Francisco, the most liberal city in the west coast, I have especially been bombarded by our local liberal politicians and community leaders to take part in the election process.  However, over the years, I have realized that under the current political climate both locally and nationally, my vote is very insignificant.

Locally speaking, people living in San Francisco Bay Area tend to be open-minded.  Politically, they are more liberal than people from other cities in the region.   Thus, the Democrats have basically dominated the politics here in San Francisco.  In theory, every vote counts.  In reality, my vote in the election process doesn’t make any difference no matter how I cast my vote in such a political environment in the city.  My vote is too tiny to have any effect on the direction of the huge Democrats' powerful political running machine that rolls over me with tons of energy.  Voting in such an environment is meaningless except that it fulfills my duty of being a responsible citizen.  If you think that your conservative vote can make a difference in San Francisco’s politics, you are a bit naïve.  You may be brainwashed by your talk show host too much unless he or she can summon substantial amount of followers to change this political landscape.

The essential issue that I see is that the current system, especially in the national level, has been established for centuries and has been hard to change for the better.  The outdated establishment is so solid and rigid that it makes changes almost impossible.  The system itself has determined its political machine and how it should be ran for a long time.  I mean that no matter which party is in power and no matter who becomes the president, this system remains the same system and the political machine is still the same machine.  The role of the president is just like a super agent who maintains this huge political machine, making sure it doesn't go astray, and it doesn't run out of gas and stop.  No matter how people vote in each election, the country is still ideologically the same capitalist country, pursuing and practicing the free market driven economic principles based on the greed of our human nature.  Basically, the system has dictated very element under the system.  So I believe that essentially, there would be no major difference if we had chosen Senator Mccain as our current president instead of President Obama, who pleaded ‘change’ in his running platform and won in the last presidential election.  If you think otherwise, please ask youself now:  What are the changes now?  Are we better off now fundamentally?  Aren't we doing the same things as before?  Please also look at these:  Our nation's debt has reached record high, and yet we are still fighting two wars in the other parts of the world in the name of anti-terrorism.  We are still struggling in the recession resulted from the greed by our elite capitalists on Wall Street, who are good at exploiting the capitalistic system’s flaw and taking advantages of  our weakness of our contemporary human society.  We are still losing our jobs while the capitalists on Wall Street continue to abuse the system even with our taxpayers’ dollars.   We are still struggling to have our heath care while the heath care related industries continue to pursue greedily their higher-profit driven agenda.  I don’t expect President Obama or other future presidents can make some critical changes to fix our problems because they have been deeply rooted in our current system, the only same old system that we have had ever since this country was founded.   In that sense, I think my vote is meaningless to me unless we people have the power to overhaul or even to break down the current system from its root and establish another system much fairer to everyone in the country, a system built based on our positive human nature, rather than the current system driven not only by the dark side of our human nature but also exploiting that of it solely without mercy.

You may say I am a dreamer.  Whenever John Lennon’s Imagine lingers in my ears and my mind, my soul becomes one, indeed.

Imagine there's no                                   Heaven It's easy if you try
No hell below us                                      Above us only sky
Imagine all the people                           Living for today

Imagine there's no countries               It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for                      And no religion too
Imagine all the people                          Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer          But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us              And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions                        I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger               A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people                          Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer          But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us              And the world will live as one