If Only: More Americans Voted *for* Themselves (and Not *Against* Others)

It's Election Day in America, where the left votes according to "hope FOR _________" and the right votes based on "rage AGAINST __________". But what if things were different?

It's Election Day in America.
Voters are at the polls as we speak.

Some of them (ahem, us) are casting ballots based on an ethos of desperate hope, care for the common good, and an authentic belief in a better future for all - yes, all - Americans.

Some of them are…not doing that. This group belongs to a noisy and dishearteningly large contingent of rage-and-fear-baited citizens who are voting against other Americans, rather than voting for themselves.

This has become a hallmark of the American political landscape for most of my adult life - at the very least since 2008. I can vaguely remember a time before I was of voting age but when I was already keeping tabs on American politics…and the vibe (if not the reality) was very different. This was in 2002-2006. I was a high schooler and aspiring military journalist with limited-bordering-on-nonexistent access to dial-up internet (the only kind we had). Everything I knew about American politics, I absorbed through hefty month-old newspapers left at the local library, or from my conservative grandfather (who is certainly rolling in his grave at what passes for “conservative” now).

In high school, despite already knowing I was queer, I identified as a conservative. Not VERY conservative, mind you…but certainly right of center. I was a queer artist intrigued by Wiccan ideology - there was only so far right I could go, right? But in those days, it seemed like no matter what political party you identified with, you did so because you were IN FAVOR OF concrete ideas that directly affected you rather than AGAINST abstract principles that didn’t directly affect you - at least to the machinations of a high schooler’s mind. My recollection of my reasons for feeling more conservative than not were:
A) a vague understanding that conservative = military-friendly;
B) hearing the adults in my life insist that liberals hated working-class white people and would keep us poor while they grew richer (it’s complicated - more on this later); and
C) being told by my grandfather that conservative politics were better for the economy, and that I should care deeply about the economy because someday it would either ruin or enchant my adult life (he was right about that part, at least…for damn sure).

So there we have it: three concrete ideas that promised (or threatened) to shape my adult life before I was even old enough to vote. And so, I understood that when I finally came of voting age, it was my duty as an American citizen to cast a ballot FOR myself, IN FAVOR of myself.

Between the time I started high school and the time I ended it, my politics had started to shift. No, I wasn’t being indoctrinated by my teachers - I was getting better access to the internet in the blessed, blessed age before social media was available to high schoolers. With it, I was learning more about the socioeconomics of other countries; about the history of the feminist movement; about the dangers of abstinence-only sex education; about the gender wage gap…the list of other things I learned I could vote FOR (for myself) goes on and on.

But a shift came in 2008. For the first time, I remember hearing people (even supposedly enlightened people) talking about voting against Obama; against “socialism”; against “the gays”; against “scandalous liberal politics”. I remember thinking, “Hey, I’m one of those gays you’re talking about - why do you care who I’m sleeping with?” It never occurred to me that these folks didn’t understand that queer folks aren’t evangelical about queerness the way that Christians are evangelical about Christianity. We have no plans to knock on your door and ask if you’d be interested in being queer.

Fast-forward to today: Election Day 2024 in America. A divided country is duking it out with black pens instead of guns (for the time being at least, and may it stay so).

The whole country is holding its collective breath.

In the polling stations, millions of Americans are showing up not to vote for what they hope to make possible for themselves and others - but rather, for what they hope to make impossible for others. In the process, those folks are making essential elements of American life and the American dream impossible for themselves and for their children and grandchildren…whether they’re able to admit it or not.

So, what might America look like if voting were somehow structured differently - if you voted not for a candidate or for a party, but by filling out a ballot full of questions about how you wanted YOUR life to look?

I have many conservative relatives still living and voting down in Georgia this evening - some of them even MAGA conservatives (or so their facebook posts lead me to believe). If they couldn’t vote for Trump or vote for the Republican party, and instead had to answer a ballot question reading, “Yes or No: Do you want Social Security benefits commensurate with the cost of living to be available to you when you retire?”…how might that change things? And what if they knew that their answers were recorded and assigned to their name and Social Security number, and that their personal Social Security benefits would actually be reduced or altogether removed if they answered “no”? How many conservatives would, in this case, still vote for a party that would undermine their own best interests…just because the other party supported freedoms and benefits for populations of people that that conservative hated for some abstract reason?

And yet, this is essentially an allegory for how things are unfolding in America today. People are making this choice tonight, whether they understand it or not.

So…what would America look like if voting mechanisms were structured such that citizens had to vote FOR themselves - in their own interests - rather than AGAINST the interests, freedoms, and benefit others?

I hope you’ll chew on this question and share it with others as a way of helping you keep your cool as the results roll in this evening.

Have a good Election Day, friends. May this sunset not be the last one before the dawn of codified fascism in America.