Vote With Your Middle Finger
It's the American Way.
An overlooked characteristic of this election is that both candidates are incumbents. We had a full 4 years of Trump as President. And we've had almost 4 years of a Biden/Harris administration in which, when asked if she would change anything if she had been President, Harris responded, "there is not a thing that comes to mind." So even though she was VP and not P, it seems to amount to the same.
A common conceit of voting is consequentialist. The election campaigns and parties tell you what they will do and what the other side will do. And we believe them. Or, in our wisdom and prescience, we imagine that we know how the executives we elect will act in all unknown future situations.
And when we don't believe them, we come up with clever ways to tell ourselves we understand what they mean. Trump should be taken "seriously but not literally". Kamala won't actually institute a wealth tax - she knows it won't pass Congress. Take this exhausting example from a Matthew Yglesias reader:
isn’t there something astonishing and historically unprecedented about the massive gap between Trump’s pretend moderation on the campaign trail and the hard-right policy we will get if he wins? Republicans are planning to aggressively reshape American society into one with far less social insurance and far less personal autonomy - and not only have they not attempted really any persuasion on behalf of this agenda, they have actively worked to conceal it! Has a political party in a democracy ever attempted social change on this scale via sneak attack? And don’t Trump’s authoritarian aspirations kind of make sense in light of all this?
Yglesias, who I find often has great left-leaning policies ideas and excellent critique of the right, has an overdetermined and desultory answer to this reader's question:
"Yes."
What? We just seem to leverage this sort of perspective as we see fit. It's unfalsifiable — preference falsification for the other guy. When Trump says "I'm against a Federal abortion ban" what he means is "I will institute a federal abortion ban!" Every pundit and talking head knows what "the other guy” is really thinking and what should be taken seriously and what literally.
Bullshit.
When Bush W entered the White House after Clinton he was quite dove-ish, criticizing the nation-building of Clinton and taking a less interventionist tack. Then 9-11 happened and we invaded a country. When Obama took office, the other side chided his lack of foreign policy experience and then he made the call to successfully take down Bin Laden. Trump loved chanting "Lock Her Up" and demanding that Mexico pay for a big wall and then declined to prosecute Hillary and didn't build much of a wall. Biden ran on "normal" and "moderate" and ended up progressive and childish and looney.
We need to disabuse ourselves of consequentialist ideas. The specific policy ideas that either side spout or refute are meaningless except for vibes. We can get an idea of what candidates care about and what they think you care about. Which is why longform interviews are so valuable. For vibes.
So don't vote for policies. Vote for vibes. Specifically, vote against the vibes you can't stand. This is far more American. Here's why:
Voting for a policy is a dispositive selection for the future. You are attempting to select a particular set of future outcomes based on a remarkably vague set of truths and lies about your potential options. This doesn't work.
But voting for vibes is inherently negative. You are voting against the vibes you don't like. You can safely ignore any policy prescription the Trump campaign has said. And you can ignore all the policies of Harris too — or rather, her lack of defined policies. You get their vibes and you've seen the actual actions both administrations would take.
That's enough to vote with your middle finger. To say “not in my country.” It's one of the most American acts there is: the art of the fuck you.
Americans have for two hundred and fifty years repeatedly given a fuck you to authorities they don't like. If there's one thing we're good at, it's overreacting after someone told us what to do or tried to put us in our place. We sent the British packing (repeatedly). Then we kicked the Europeans out of the entire western hemisphere. We kicked Hitler's ass when he thought we'd sit out his war. And then we’ve played policeman to the entire ocean afterwards. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after 9-11.
One could argue that this is the original American impulse, with a direct lineage right back to George's obscene colonial taxes. Hell I'm still angry about that.
We've got two highly imperfect candidate and I'm not going to tell you how I think you should vote. But I used to hate the idea of voting "against" something. I didn't like the idea of disliking a candidate and voting against them. But as I've come to realize that an election is less about policy and more about general direction, I've come to believe this is the way.
It's possible to argue that the Right is out to constitute a Handmaid's Tale style theocracy with limited rights and a dynasty of fascistic terror. And it's possible to argue that the Left is out for a pure Marxist/Communist future that makes the Handicapper General from Harrison Bergeron look democratic.
I don't believe either of these tyrannical fever dreams. You shouldn't either, we've seen both candidates in the White House. We shouldn't even believe the policies. But we get the vibes. And by voting against the one that worries you the most, you can send a message and help the country course correct and avoid the various forms of despotism that lie dangerously in wait.
As Tocqueville described:
"The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Act and vote against despotism. Against softening. Against timidity and tyranny.
Vote with your middle finger.
