the outside agitator

After this past spring brought mass unrest and action across the country protesting the U.S. war machine’s arming of Israel — on the streets, targeting weapons manufacturers, at college campuses, the self-immolations of several resistors — the Democratic Party continued what it does best: settling into its core driving principle of standing by until dust settles. 

Epitomizing this inaction, the Democratic Party chose to run the same candidate for president again. Rather than finally abandon the antiquated ‘liberal’ arm of the political machine, righteous voters made a ‘radical’ demand they would not vote for a candidate that didn’t commit to a ceasefire. (Notably, The Uncommitted Movement thus cut its own nails: it moved through the most palatable avenues of asking very nicely for the US to symbolically declare that violence in Gaza should stop (passive voice intended)). 

In the face of the people leveraging their ‘critical currency’ and threatening to withhold their vote, the Democratic Party was coerced into waking from its deep hibernation of non-reaction. In the greatest act of self-preservation, it made a strategic concession. It sacrificed its outermost face, shedding Genocide Joe for Killer Kamala: a face it could pretend was fresh and new, with uncontested legitimacy. It gripped the chin of the Uncommitted Movement, tipped it backward, and delivered Kamala, a non-response to their demands, down the movement’s throats like a spoonful of arsenic masquerading as cough syrup. It turned its back and zealously continued mass shipments of arms to Israel.

In U.S. electoralism, these “concessions” come only when collective consciousness begins to tip against the machine, with people recognizing their own country is fundamentally tied to this genocide through lobbying, arms shipments, police exchanges, etc. Yet, in this one move, the party subverted the attention it was accruing: transforming the public narrative with identity politics and a fresher, younger face. 

However, despite Kamala being aggressively distanced from her current role as vice president, she is already a part of the current administration and its actions. She is already an architect of the genocide in Gaza. The Democratic party has weaponized identity politics to her ardent defense, shutting down any attempts at critiquing her past, and current, actions. If raising attention around her lack of policy platform or how the party entirely circumvented primaries in selecting her harms her chances as a candidate, let us push further: 

Why do we let this system play us a fool by telling us that Kamala Harris is a win, rather than another candidate anointed by the Democratic elite? Why are we letting it hypnotize us into thinking we are playing it?

This is precisely the function of the liberal political party. This is what it did after uprisings in 2020 protesting the police killing of George Floyd. The Democratic party sees that the narrative is off politics and instead on revolution, so what do they do? Offer a fresh face to the algorithm. 

The amerikkkan political machine is not to be trusted. It is not a source of hope, but it does effectively encapsulate the amerikan dream: hollow, artificial, restrictive, and white. Patriotism acts as a veil concealing the blistered underbelly of our imperialist police state. Whoever holds the highest office assumes the role of chief pig. Who cares whose snout is head of state when the amerikkkan apparatus is massacring with impunity?

An excerpt from Ismatu Gwendolyn’s Substack essay “Harris, Palestine, and the Spectacle of Liberation”:

“What happens when a genocide falls out of the news cycle? For those of us in the West? …Relief. Don’t shy away from these thoughts. It’s my job, as an artist, to force us to be honest. We silently feel relieved. We feel exhausted by the weight of having to care about people we ultimately feel we can do nothing for. True radicalization, the kind of change of thought that translates into changed action, only happens for a precious few. The vast majority of onlookers never really wanted to move from their position as spectator; they just fervently wished for a happier ending. So when there is less to look at (because the news cycle needs fresh blood; because the people providing live, on the ground coverage have been killed; when there’s less to look at because we have seen so many clips and photographs and accounts of visceral deaths that looking only makes us numb anyhow), we turn our eyes to the easiest narrative of hope that our screens can provide. We accept a manufactured happy ending.”

Liberal media has turned its nose up at any person still prioritizing Palestine, calling them single-issue voters, thus becoming further arms of the state, ‘creative counterinsurgents’. Because the majority of Americans can distance themselves from ever hearing about what is happening in Palestine by turning their phones off, domestic issues can be portrayed as completely separate. Yet, FEMA recently announced it faces nearly a $9 billion dollar shortage needed for Hurricane Helene recovery efforts the same day that Israel announced a $8.7 billion weapons package received from the US. It becomes clear: declarations of loyalty to a party only serves to reinforce its impunity to commit genocide. 

Kamala Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention accepting the party’s nomination laid bare the deeper intentions behind these surface-level efforts to ‘preserve democracy’, touting the chilling, hawkish claim that as commander-in-chief, she’d ensure the US had the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world. A Harris administration will continue these “tough on crime” reforms that do nothing to better communities and everything to line the pockets of the major players within the militarized prison-industrial complex.

Many will argue not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump, and not voting at all is a disgusting act of privilege. This perspective only works to validate the duopoly our country is currently operating under while doing nothing to reckon with the damage it has caused. The lesser of two evils argument should not be used to justify the acceptance, and blatant celebration, of career war criminals elected to head the American imperial apparatus. We cannot continue to legitimize a national system that is almost single-handedly responsible for the majority of international conflicts that have taken place since the end of the Second World War. This period of endless wars has barely breached American soil, leaving many living in the United States to revel in ignorance.

The democratic party cannot ‘preserve’ democracy in a country that prioritizes corporate interests over community care. A capitalist country cannot truly be democratic as class stratification is inherent to the nation’s functioning. The racial capitalist system we are currently living within is so deeply embedded into our society that many refuse to look beyond obvious systems of power for a true solution. The amerikkkan imperial project has been immensely successful in hiding the atrocities it has committed by carrying them out overseas, maintaining domestic focus on culture wars and political caricatures. Donald Trump is not anywhere near the worst thing that has happened to amerikkka, a country founded on centuries of chattel slavery that continues to this day behind prison walls. The only way out is the complete delegitimization and dismissal of the presidential office. 

The political parties, including third parties, will keep telling us that the time is not right to disengage from voting for presidents altogether, and every time we listen we prove them right. As the amerikkkan imperial project crumbles, the conditions framing each election will continue descending into crisis. One more election will not move us closer toward liberation. The violence amerikkka wrecks is inevitable when the position of president in the U.S. is structurally designed to cause massive harm to others on the international level and at home. It’s a position that necessitates being and becoming a war criminal, coming with the added benefit of almost guaranteed impunity. The moment will never be Right to disengage from this — it requires you to intentionally Opt Out out of what the dominant narrative has told you is your only responsibility: to just vote and return to an individualistic way of living. Are we in this cycle till we fucking die?  

The amerikkkan government as we know it cannot be reformed. It is a malignant tumor that will kill its host unless extracted. While we all sit in front of our TVs drooling over political puppetry, our government is continuing its nearly 300-year-long killing spree.

The unfathomable levels of corruption and violence our country requires to function is omnipresent regardless of who takes office. Fear-mongering campaigns, such as Project 2025, are used to sway voters to the democratic party, who at this point barely has a platform outside of funding police and bashing conservatives. The heightened militarization we are experiencing nationally has only increased under biden, an ardent supporter of israel. A Harris administration will continue these tough on crime reforms that do nothing to better communities and everything to line the pockets of the major players within the militarized prison industrial complex. No person in ‘the highest office in the land’ is a righteous actor. Many of those calling out others’ privilege for their voting choices in this situation are those who have never experienced the underbelly of state violence that marginalized communities have been bearing the brunt of since the initial conquest of Native territory on Turtle Island. 

An undeniable reality is that the genocide in Gaza changed a lot of things for a lot of people, many of whom are not going to vote because over a year of inaction has traumatized them. General faith in the US government is in extreme flux; many sides of the populace do not agree with the current administration—maintenance of the status quo will do nothing to change this. A vote for Kamala is a vote for genocide, as is a vote for Trump. Ignorantly casting your vote in this next election is not a passive action—it is an active endorsement of the current system that has never and will never care about the people. We have all been witnessing the endless videos and photos of unfathomable violence. Many of us have been protesting genocide and getting brutalized as we watch the demokkkratic administration liken protestors to N*zis who protested in Charlottesville. A vote for democrats is a reward for that behavior. It is the clearest way one can show their support for the amerikkkan police state while turning their back on the people of Palestine, whose struggle many of us will never be able to truly comprehend.