Where I’m At; the Paradigm of America
The day after the election, I gave up on America
The day after the election, I gave up on America.
I’m being serious. We’re a decade into the Trump era. By the end of his presidency, it will be 13 years since he began his first MAGA campaign.
Not only is this tremendously sad, because the confederacy only lasted four years. Which means, the America of the 1860s was better at cutting out the shit than we are.
But on a personal level, I was 26 when he was elected. And I’ll be nearly 39 when he’s done. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste the most vital decade of my life on this man.
I invested a lot of emotional energy over the years trying to be part of the change. Trying to be part of this progressive movement forward.
But there’s a principle in physics called The Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that, in a closed system, energy cannot be created or destroyed, it has to be transformed.
And it occurs to me that the current American electorate is precisely that. We only get so many new voters and lose so many old voters per election cycle.
Most of our electorate is stable. It includes diehard Republicans; diehard Democrats. Progressives that hate both; Libertarians that hate both. The people who never voted.
The people who have been taught that it’s fruitless - because they either live in California (which always goes blue), or they live in Utah (which always goes red). So they think, what does it matter? (And they’re right!)
Apathy is both a valid and invalid part of our electoral system.
After the 2024 votes were tallied, I made this chart: When someone tells you that Donald Trump is popular with 50% of Americans, show them this:
According to the vote tallies I calculated:
73% of American citizens were eligible to vote in 2024.
63% of eligible voters turned out to vote.
Which means, 46% of the American population turned out to vote.
Trump won 31% of eligible voters.
Which means he won 23% of the American population.
But what that really means is that 69% of eligible voters didn’t vote for him.
And yet, he still won.
That means we absolutely, positively didn’t need to be here.
If 168 million existing American voters had wanted this guy out of the picture, he would be out of the picture for good.
It wouldn’t matter if he got 77 million votes or 78 million votes. Or even 85 million votes. If the American people had truly wanted him out in 2024, he would not have won. His voters are NOT the majority.
We already had the power we needed. We just didn’t fucking use it.
And that’s why I gave up on America after election day.
Because I realized: I have always only been a single vote-holder. I am currently worth exactly one single vote in the state of Georgia.
As I wrote when Stacy Abrams lost in 2022
Voting days are hard because when it all comes down to it, our vote equals only one.
No matter how much one person cares and how much progress one person wants to make - the gains and the losses are the responsibility of all people who live here.
The chance to actually fix our problems rests on our collective ability to elect those who can get the job done.
Yesterday, Georgians - both those who voted and those who didn't - made a decision - and now we gotta own it.
What happens to us now - is on us.
Those who do vote and those who don't vote have BOTH created our future.
It’s true that there are people who don’t understand the presidency at all. They don’t understand its limited impact on economic policy - or how it affects lifetime Supreme Court appointments.
During phone banking last fall, a voter in Georgia said, “Is Kamala going to buy my groceries for me? Is she going to pay my rent?” His implication was, if she’s not - I’m not going to vote.
And it showed the level of ignorance behind some of America’s apathy.
Is that really the job we hire presidents to do?
Do voters even know what we’re supposed to expect a president to be able to change?
And if the presidency can’t make the vital changes that we need to make, then where do we start in fixing our chronic and systemic problems beyond the presidential elections?
But this is where we’re at. Regardless of ideology, apathy, or ignorance, these Voters cannot be created or destroyed.
They have to be transformed. The voters of 2016, 2020, & 2024 are probably 85% the same voters who will be there in 2028.
This means If over the next four years, the electorate doesn’t change at all, then nothing will change in 2028.
The voters, themselves, have to be willing to transform. Or nothing in this country will move forward.
The fact is, we’re never going to get a fresh start.
We can only start from this position we’re at now. If we have a corrupted system - this is our burden to bear. This is our problem to address. We can’t throw it out and start over again.
We need to actually reform it.
A month ago, I wrote: Chaos is the cheapest ingredient in a revolution. It takes zero effort to destroy things. To sabotage, throw a temper tantrum, & burn it all down.
It takes real effort to build a functional system.
Revolutionaries who come only with chaos, come with nothing.
I wanted people to know that reforming things is hard work. Building things is hard work.
But look at how many revolutions Russia has had over the past 100 years and nothing changed! Why? Because in a closed system, energy cannot be created or destroyed. It has to be transformed. And not enough Russians changed themselves.
The corrupted Russia of the Czars, transformed into the corrupted Russia of the Soviets & their Oligarchs. When the Soviets fell, a corrupted Putin arose from the KGB.
You can’t run away from who you are. You have to be willing to face it head-on and actually choose to confront and change the culture and consciousness that created it.
Revolutions are about escaping our problems. Reformation is about resolving our problems.
The problems we face, in America, have to be confronted and reformed. They won’t disappear overnight.
And the people who have abused this system aren’t going to go away in 4 years or 8 years. (And I’m pretty damn sure that we’ve barely asked them to).
The hard truth is that the culture we exist within, the things we were taught and take for granted. Not our education, but the values of our paradigm for example:
Valuing consumerism & possessions
over healthcare & family welfare.Or valuing independence & individuality
over community & group efforts.Valuing personal comfort
over environmental protectionThose values have consequences.
And those consequences of our culture aren’t going to go away when Trump is long gone.
For decades to come, we’re going to reap the consequences of the American Consumerist/Capitalist Paradigm - unless we’re brave enough to gradually reform it.
The thought occurred to me, a few days ago, that corrupt billionaires and CEOs want Donald Trump in presidency, not just because he will allow them to get tax breaks and continue with exploitive policies.
No. They want him because he makes such a perfect patsy.
He’s universally hated. And that’s why he’s solely blamed.
He pretends he’s all-powerful. He pretends he’s a cult phenomenon. He pretends he can wave his magic wand and make everything happen or nothing happen.
So he’s his own voluntary scapegoat. The perfect scapegoat for a corrupted system.
The more Donald Trump draws ire from his chronic criminality and his sensationalist fascist Tweets - the more he creates the perfect distraction for all of the powerful people and dark money who don’t want us to even know of their existence.
I’m tired of being distracted.
I want to address the root causes of the society we live in. The paradigm of this Consumerist / Capitalist America.
To me, Donald Trump is a loud-mouthed, ugly-faced, sensationalist, reality-tv puppet. Whose insides are suspiciously vacuous. Whose power is suspiciously lacking.
There’s a hand holding him up. Putting him on our TVs. Helping him escape criminal consequences. Using him to poison our justice systems with lifetime court appointments.
And that hand doesn’t have a face. Which is why we focus on Donald Trump. He gives us something to hate when we can’t identify the ambiguous shadow puppeteers in the background.
But I won’t spend the next four years distracting myself with my hatred of Donald Trump. Because hating him won’t solve the systemic consequences of this system we’ve created.
I’m at the stage where I believe that America needs to learn the consequences of its own actions. I can’t babysit others or do twice the amount of democratic labor trying to hold democracy up because other Americans refuse to do any labor at all.
Democracy only works with the active participation of its citizens.
And so does the long-haul journey of reforming a paradigm or a system.
When people band together towards a common goal - the electorate has power. When people abstain from this responsibility, the main principle of democracy fails.
And bad people will always come to rule and abuse in its absence.
But I want people to think about another aspect of this. We are not just a system of leaders. We are a system of participants in every level of society and culture.
It’s easy to get tens of millions of people to point the finger at a single politician and say, “You need to change.”
It’s very difficult to get tens of millions of people to hold up a mirror to themselves and say, “I need to change.”
Back in 2012, I was 22 years old and clueless. (God how I wish I had been 32 years old and could have enjoyed those stable Obama years).
Nevertheless, I voted. And nevertheless, I tried to make sense of politics with very little education or understanding of the forces behind it.
I had a blog called Strangers Like Me. And during the election year, I wrote:
Across the world, behind organizations, behind businesses, behind governments, behind
the illusion of an institution
are just people.
If you want to change the institution, you have to understand people.
And as much as change is needed all over the world, I firmly believe this:
If the only talent we cultivate is standing up to the wrongs of others, then our children will grow up becoming the next journalists, politicians, activists, writers, and speakers - but always pointing the finger at someone else to blame.
And thus, nothing will change.
In fact, if we can’t teach children to learn about and question themselves just as much, if not more than the effort they make to learn about and question others,
then I don’t think the world will change very much in our lifetime.
Self-healing is stronger than telling someone else that they need to heal. Self-change is more influential than telling someone else to change.
Collectively, if we were all changing ourselves right now - the world would become a better place than it is at this moment - while we’re all expecting everybody else to change.
I wrote earlier: If over the next four years, the electorate doesn’t change at all, then nothing will change in 2028. Voters, themselves, have to be willing to transform. Or nothing in this country will move forward.
The problems in this country are our responsibility. We’re not entitled to a perfect democracy. We’re not entitled to honest and moral politicians. We have to create incentivizes for people to behave that way.
In order to understand why they don’t, we have to challenge our own consumerism. Our own greed. Our own individual selfishness and egocentricity.
In order to understand why our culture has turned so many people into these capitalistic sociopaths, we have to challenge the value system we created around it.
We vote for people to represent us. Thus, the flaws they possess are sadly mirrors of our own flawed electorate.
We vote for people to lead us. And when the system is corrupted, we’re not prisoners of that system - we’re active participants.
I did, indeed, give up on America after the 2024 election.
But I created the “Resist. Rebel. Revolt.” blog and its corresponding Bluesky anyway.
Because I still believe that active participation in politics requires self-insight; self-change; & self-determination.
I believe that revolutions are better when they’re filled with self-awareness and reformation of our own cultural paradigm.
And that a democracy only functions when we take responsibility for our participation in it.
For many years, I wasn’t vocal or aware of political and economic events. But I spent a great deal of time changing myself in the interim. And it allowed me to see political and economic events with more clarity over the long-term.
I said at the beginning of this article that I invested a lot of emotional energy over the years trying to be part of the change. Trying to be part of this progressive movement forward.
And I still am. But from now on, my participation is going to be on my terms.
I have no interest in spending the next four years pointing the finger at Donald Trump. He wouldn’t be getting sworn into a second term today if our own systemic corruption and fragile electorate hadn’t failed us.
So I’ll continue to focus my energy on things I have the power to change.
Conversations I have the power to have.
And the people who I believe are trying to prevent us from realizing the truth about our own cultural paradigm.
The Consumerist/Capitalist Paradigm of America.
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https://salmun.substack.com/p/the-rich-started-the-class-war-lets?utm_source=substack&utm_content=feed%3Arecommended%3Acopy_link
This is so well thought out and written. Thank you for this.