When Cynthia Nixon announced her campaign for Governor of New York to replace Andrew Cuomo, I knew it would end in the worst way possible for the centrist progressives who excitedly jumped on board to support her.
Long story short, she rallied just about every millennial and centrist progressive on social media, in New York City. On election day, September 13, 2018, the Board of Elections texted erroneous text messages to her loyal voters, sending them on a wild goose chase to non existent polling stations.
In Nomiki Konst’s case, when the polling station was finally found, she discovered she wasn’t even registered. As a result, she was forced to fill out a “provisional ballot.” In California, we learned early on in the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign, thanks to local San Francisco KALW radio host Rose Aguilar ending each of her segments daily for weeks on end, that provisional ballots were about as useful as toilet paper, and I can still hear her voice “If you get a provisional ballot, it is worthless. Don’t vote on it.” I winced in sympathy when I saw Nomiki’s video on Twitter. She could barely hold back her tears.
When a Canadian interviewer asked Chris Hedges, “Didn’t the 2008 collapse of America’s economy inspire Americans to fight in the street and take back their government from the corrupt hands that has choked the life out of it?” He shook his head in response. Sadly, Americans didn’t learn then, and it seems the lesson still hasn’t been learned.
This is where we are now with the Cynthia Nixon campaign. I, like many anarchists who shake our heads and go “no contact” in the face of representative democracy, feel the sting on behalf of our brothers and sisters in this country that continue to podcast, pound the pavement, discuss, dissect and believe in a system that is inverted. Like Chris Hedges says, America at its democratic core, has decayed. We live in a state of inverted totalitarianism. Citizens, or voters, have no real power in the Corporatocracy that runs every facet of our overly surveilled, scapegoated, non-autonomous lives.
The thing is, we saw this very thing happen with the Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. Many people say “Bernie would’ve won.” But what people fail to realize is that Bernie actually did win. He had the democratic nomination stolen from his campaign. This was a coup orchestrated by the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. It unleashed an all out attack on the progressive wing. It really was war. There is proof, through the Jared and Elizabeth Beck lawsuit brought against the Democratic National Committee, who were at the helm of this attack.
But, even if Bernie were president, he would not have been able to orchestrate any real change since those who control the levers of power in our establishment are sitting at the feet of corporations who make profits off of global destabilization projects, are allied with Middle East leaders who are some of the most depraved and psychopathic individuals to ever walk the earth, and profit off the American prison industry which houses the most incarcerated human beings on the planet, creating a slave trade that has benefited the globe. These three institutions and relationships alone need to be decimated, shattered, broken up and never to be forged again. Bernie Sanders would not have been able to do this.
The thing I’ve learned since my black flag was raised is that my job is to teach the hard lessons that centrist progressives simply don’t want to hear. Ironically, the other half of this electoral theater, the right wing conservative half, tend to agree with me. They agree with me that the corporate take-over of our government is disarming and needs to be broken up somehow. I also discovered that one of the reasons the right wing conservatives have been able to forge alliances so closely and remain strong and tight in their position, is that there is no internal squabbling. There is no corporate or progressive wing of the Republican party. They are Republican. Rich or poor they know the importance of alliances even if it’s just for the sake of strength in numbers. This is why there is no real resistance from them when radical right wing Christians are installed into their various positions of power. They know they can’t fight these installations, even if they fundamentally disagree with them, and they wouldn’t anyway. As long as there is an (R) behind their name, they will blindly sit in obedience.
What everyone needs, in my opinion and I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert on this subject, is an evolution of the mind. We must understand that the foundation of our existence on this soil was devoid of principle. It was amoral, violent and we forged this land not with reason or democracy or gentle curiosity of our new land, but with force and a vicious selfishness that would label our forefathers serial killers had the DSM model for psychiatric evaluation existed back then.
Once we can self evaluate and humbly apologize to the globe for our treacherous behavior over the last few hundred years, we can begin the path out of this garbage heap. Once we can make real reparations to the Native Americans first, we can start to actually heal ourselves. Wealthy or poor we must make actual sacrifices, and for the wealthy those sacrifices would barely make a dent in their bloated, sacred bank accounts hidden off shore. For the poor, the sacrifice would be an empowering moment where depression and drug addiction would be replaced with the empowering feeling of basic mutual aid and knowing that they are useful and needed in a society that is so quick to discard them. And for everyone in between, who has enough just to survive, a bountiful existence would surely be offered them. For, instead of taking that yearly vacation, if they invested their energy and time and money into replacing pipes in a small community that has suffered from lead poisoning or hookworm, surely their Instagram pages would be filled with millions of likes if people were to see what enormous help a small gesture or sacrifice could make to a community desperately in need.
We learned this in Puerto Rico. A small mountainous community didn’t wait for the government to restore their power. After Hurricane Maria, they forged ahead and in true anarchist style, they were able to build a grid and bring the power back to the people all on their own through mutual empowerment. In the true sense of the word, this is an example of how anarchists beat Disaster Capitalism.
What does all this have to do with the Cynthia Nixon campaign? We have to take a hard look at the outcome and basic understanding of this campaign. A famous actor who has never been poor ran for office. Red flag one. The Board of Elections sent false information to the voters. Red flag two. Lifelong democrats were forced to fill out garbage ballots. Red flag three. To look at this plainly, cognitively, we can see that Nixon was the useful idiot for a party that has one singular goal in mind: to worship at the feet of capitalism. Any progressives that might have slipped through the cracks and made a dent in their goal, which was to make sure the corporate goon (Cuomo) won, were whisked away into oblivion, their votes disappeared and swallowed up, along with all that energy and hopefulness.
And now, Nixon has been scapegoated. Corporate funded state media has lifted her up as a fool. Rather than respond and waste our energy coming to her defense, which is our natural inclination when we see a wrong doing, we should be channeling our energy elsewhere: to ourselves in self reflection and to each other, in mutual aid and direct democracy. Her campaign story will now set the precedence and be the blueprint for future elections. Get used to more of this. Or, we must fall off the system passively, quietly disappear into the night and make the changes necessary to fix our broken country in the ways described above. Because the jig is up folks. Cynthia Nixon was used to keep you from doing just that.