Regular readers know that Vee is to Jenna’s Side what Norm is to Cheers: a familiar fixture guaranteed to liven up the place. If you’re new here, allow me some quick context. Vee is one of my most active and engaged followers. He’s passionate, principled, and quite possibly the most relentlessly opinionated human being I’ve ever encountered, besides me. He’s a recurring character in the comment section, where he has spent approximately 47,000 hours patiently explaining why a majority of what I believe about American politics is dead wrong.
I love Vee. I truly do. He brings a lot to the party. Even though we frequently disagree, he’s never once been disrespectful. And because he’s made his positions so very, very clear, I often find myself asking “what is Vee going to say about that?” before I publish, which keeps me on my literary toes. I guess you could call him my muse—if muses ever let you have the last word. ;)
Vee and I agree on plenty of things—including the fact that our government is corrupt, powerful interests wield way too much influence over policy, and the majority of our elected officials couldn’t find their own moral compass with an AirTag and a search warrant.
Where we part ways is what to do about it.
I’ll add here that I have 1,177 comments to rely on for this analysis, and I pinky-promise that I am doing my best to be fair and representative. That said, I’m absurdly confident that if I’ve gotten anything wrong, our subject will let us know. In the comments, of course.😉
For starters, Vee doesn’t vote. Not because he’s lazy or apathetic or can’t be bothered to drive to his local polling place. In fact, the opposite. He considers voting an act of submission to a corrupt system designed to give the hoodwinked masses the illusion that they actually have a say in their government.
In Vee’s world, Republicans and Democrats are merely “two wings of the same bird,” flapping furiously while going absolutely nowhere. Winning candidates are selected, not elected. Elections are pure theater. The real decisions are made by a self-appointed global ruling class that keeps the rest of us fighting over manufactured differences while quietly consolidating its own obscene power. There is no gray area.
The bigger picture looks like this: the suckers who’d happily line up beneath an “I BELIEVE MY GOVERNMENT LOVES ME AND WANTS TO PROTECT ME” banner belong in what Vee and I have unofficially designated Camp 1. Folks like me—who know the system is fundamentally broken but are still participating in the left-right paradigm—fall into Camp 2. The Truly Enlightened™, the ones like Vee who’ve figured out the ruse and are loudly opting out, occupy Camp 3. Abstinence is their political party, and absolutism is their religion.
The primary requirement for Camp 3 admission, as far as I can tell, is abandoning any hope of finding deliverance at the ballot box.
“Once you go to Camp 3, there is no going back to Camp 2,” Vee recently informed this community. “It’s like an anti-vaxxer going back to being pro-vaxx.”
Trust me, I get the analogy. I understand that there are things you can’t unsee, unlearn, or unknow. The only way to get me back to Camp 1 would be to drag my cold, lifeless body there—and I like to think that even in death, I would make that a miserable task for the dragger. But I do find it curious that a philosophy built around questioning everything comes with a strict prohibition against questioning it.
I’m not calling that a cult necessarily, but you have to admit it’s not entirely unculty.
The other amusing bit is that Vee believes the ruling class has deliberately divided us into two opposing camps to keep us fighting. So he’s solved that pesky problem by [*checks notes*] dividing Americans into two opposing camps—namely, the people who’ve figured it out and the people who haven’t. Apparently the problem wasn’t the division. It was the labeling.
I know Vee’s got plenty of campers on his side, so before any of you come at me with swords, let me reiterate the many things I think Vee gets unequivocally right. Politicians lie. Trump promised no more wars. He’s refused to acknowledge what a bloodbath OWS and the whole bioweapon program was (and is). He’s done nothing to hold pandemic-era officials accountable for their disastrous decisions. He vowed to drain the swamp and yet seems hell bent on routinely stocking it with fresh alligators.
All of those things—and many more—infuriate me, too.
But here’s where Vee loses me: acknowledging that the system is flawed and leaders are imperfect does not establish that every candidate is interchangeable, every election is predetermined, or every vote is meaningless. Vee’s favorite analogy is that any election is like choosing between Coke and Pepsi—and as someone who would happily down a Diet Coke and would choose battery acid over Diet Pepsi, I couldn’t agree more.
That’s not what he means, of course. He’s essentially saying different packaging, same product. (THEY’RE NOT, but okay.) Which makes a handy, relatable analogy, except sodas don’t determine immigration policies. They don’t appoint Supreme Court justices. They don’t write abortion laws, regulate transgender surgeries for minors, determine who gets to compete in women’s sports, or decide which businesses can operate during a public-health “emergency.” And if anyone seriously questions the difference elected officials can make, how do you explain, for example, the Covid approaches in Florida versus New York?
Those differences weren’t imaginary or trivial. They impacted people’s livelihoods, their kids’ education, their businesses, and their ability to travel, dine, shop, and literally leave their homes without committing a misdemeanor. Vee argues that powerful interests control both parties. Fine. But just because the same billionaires are greasing palms on both sides of the aisle doesn’t mean they’re getting identical results for their money.
Then there’s his insistence that voting machines are rigged. And they probably are! For the sake of argument, let’s unplug every last one and replace them with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots. Would Vee vote? Presumably not, because the candidates are all still selected by the ruling class. Okay, then. Suppose we could somehow establish that they weren’t? Would he vote then? Still no, apparently, because voting itself constitutes consent to be governed.
So because the game is fixed, the winner is predetermined, and casting a ballot is an act of submission, Vee has come up with a proposed solution, one he’s been explaining to me for going on three years now: Build parallel societies. Decentralize. Grow our own food. Collect rainwater. Form strong local communities. Wear DON’T TREAD ON ME hoodies—and mean it.
Honestly? I love that. All of it. I’m all in on self-sufficiency, community, regenerative farming, and regularly flipping a not-so-polite finger to the establishment.
But a vegetable garden isn’t a judicial system and a barrel of water isn’t going to do me much good when some lunatic is trying to break into my house. What happens when your neighbor decides your property is actually his property? Do you challenge him to a composting contest? When the sleeper cells activate—I mean if—do we meet at the community clubhouse with our pitchforks or just declare our backyards sovereign nations and hope for the best?
Because the thing about parallel systems is that they’re still systems. Who’s maintaining the roads? Delivering the mail? Making sure the bridges don’t collapse? Running 911 dispatch? Operating air traffic control? Collecting garbage and operating landfills? Those unfun jobs don’t just decide to take care of themselves if we opt out of government. And once we appoint people within our shiny new parallel systems, congratulations! We’ve invented government again.
Honestly, it feels like a sixteen-year-old declaring independence from his parents while asking for the Wi-Fi password and demanding to know what’s for dinner.
The thing is, having a backup apparatus can reduce our dependence on government—but it doesn’t stop the government from making decisions about us. My big question is, why on earth can’t we do both?
Why can’t we grow our own kale, support independent businesses, build badass communities, resist government overreach, AND spend fifteen minutes voting for the people least likely to screw it all up? Vee says we can’t vote ourselves out of tyranny. Maybe not. But I fail to see how voluntarily surrendering one of the few mechanisms we possess for influencing government brings us any closer to escaping it.
Finally there’s the “consent to be governed” argument. Also one I understand in theory. Hell, if I had to pick a personal motto, it would be “you’re not the boss of me,” preferably emblazoned on a yard sign my HOA prohibits. But does skipping the polls mean the IRS will stop expecting their cut? Can you blow through a school zone at 80 mph because you never consented to the speed limit? Are you going to tell the cop who pulls you over that you don’t recognize his authority and expect him to apologize for making you late for church?
I’m afraid the government is spectacularly uninterested in whether any of us have RSVP’d to its little democracy party. It will tax us, regulate us, and tow our illegally parked cars with precisely the same enthusiasm whether we voted for its representatives or spent Election Day sanitizing our rain barrels. Refusing to vote doesn’t put even a tiny dent in its power. It simply means other people get to decide who’s exercising it.
Here’s something I wish Vee would consider: You don’t have to be convinced Trump is a savior to believe his administration will make different decisions than a Democratic one. You don’t have to trust Republicans to recognize that certain Republican policies may be preferable. You don’t have to maintain that elections are perfectly fair to believe their outcomes have consequences. Look at what’s happening right now in Paris, London, Brussels, and Milan—versus what’s not happening in Poland—and then tell me voting is a waste of time.
You can distrust politicians, question institutions, reject artificial outrage, build your own little off-grid utopia, and still recognize that the people we put in the wing chairs matter. Those positions are not mutually exclusive.
With the midterms less than three weeks away, this isn’t an academic debate. We have self-described socialists running for office, critical American cities embracing radical left leadership, and battles over parental rights, free speech, and constitutional liberties playing out from Congress to the local school board. These aren’t hypothetical differences to be debated over a few beers. They’re decisions about how we’ll live, what we’ll be allowed to say and do, and the kind of country we’re leaving our children.
Vee has kids. So do I. And if there’s even a whisper of a chance that showing up to cast a vote makes their world a little better, I genuinely can’t imagine opting out.
The house is on fire. You have a fire extinguisher. Maybe you can’t save the whole house—you definitely can’t save the whole house, it’s too late for that—but you might be able to save a room. A photo album. The dog. Do you really stand on the lawn arguing about the inefficiency of fire extinguishers while Lola Labradoodle is still inside?
Vee believes the current system is beyond redemption; that there’s nothing we can do to repair it. You know what’s funny? If I were part of a shadowy cabal hell-bent on dividing Americans, consolidating power, and eliminating any effective opposition, convincing people they were powerless would be my number-one goal. I’d sell them the idea that resignation was actually resistance, and promise them that the best and most meaningful thing they could do would be to hand over their power without a fight.
Then I’d give them their own camp and tell them they were the enlightened ones.
I’ll say again, for the record, that I love Vee and I welcome his contributions here. Whether you agree or disagree with either of us, please be kind and respectful.
POLL REDUX FOR FINICKY PHONES
My thoughts on voting are best summed up as...
It’s a duty and a privilege.
Can’t hurt, might help.
Utter waste of time.
I wish I knew.
*combo/unsure/other
A lot of what Vee says may be true. But everything would be better if everyone would vote like me.
Wait - WHAT??! Vee’s a HE??! Give me some time to wrap my head around my mistaken stereotypical misconception before I go on reading the entire stack LOL