Why I'm Voting for Nader

Of course Nader can't win--I understand that--but that doesn't mean I'm voting for him to merely "express my conscience", as some people like to put it. The truth is that no candidate, including Nader, comes close to representing my conscience. That choice, in our pretend democracy, is off the table. Our representative democracy doesn't allow me to vote "for" anything, because the voting process doesn't, on a personal level, offer me anything of value. What I can do, though, thanks to Nader and other third party candidates, is vote against something. I can vote against the system.

Obama is one of the more reliable sellouts to ever run for office. Due to political pressure, he now supports off-shore drilling for oil, has voted numerous times in support of subsidizing corn-ethanol (the position that won him the Iowa primary), has clearly voiced his approval of "free" trade policies, has said that he won't withdraw American troops from Iraq before 2013, and has back-tracked on campaign finance reform and coal subsidies since it became politically advantageous to do so. He has solicited for and received millions of dollars in corporate campaign support, from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Excelon, UBS, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley, many of the same corporations who directly benefited from the 420 dollar bailout he approved. And his support of Tort "reform" (making it more difficult to sue corporations), his rejection of single-payer health care, his vote to cap the damages that victims of malpractice could receive, and his vote against an ammendment to cap credit card interest rates at 30% show very clearly that he intends to pay back his supporters with policy decisions that represent corporate interest at the expense of everyone else. It's pretty clear that you can't work "within" the system, a system that is evil to its core, and expect non evil results. And Obama unquestioningly represents the system.

A vote for Nader, on the other hand, represents an honest critique of what our country is doing to the natural environment and to the developing world and to the non-elites within American borders. A vote for Nader represents an honest voice of protest against corporate-dominated America. In short, it represents a protest against abuse.

Let me put it this way: what if someone said that you had to be in an abusive relationship with a person who would beat and molest you every day or a person who would beat and molest you, more mildly, only once a week? That, to me, is the choice we're being given by our two party system. The fact that both Obama and McCain supported a 420 billion dollar robbery--a continuation, in other words, of the American government's practice of taking money and resources from the poor and middle classes of the world and giving it to the elites--only proves my point. And I don't want to cast a vote in favor of abuse, a vote that sanctions and authorizes and legitimizes that abuse. My vote for Nader, who opposed the bailout and who favors placing severe restrictions on the abusive power of corporations, sends the message that I don't want to be in a relationship under abusive circumstances (even if I don't agree with many of the socialistic ideas of Nader). A vote for either Obama or McCain, on the other hand, represents a vote for an abusive system--a tacit approval of exploitation--which, by my definition, is not merely a wasted vote but an unethical one.