No, thank you. I'm going to abstain.

Disclaimer: I will quote Marx and Gil Scott Heron, in the biggest of the calms.

Abstentionism is often that figure that we don't know what to say (starting with the presenters of political broadcasts) on election night. A figure that seems to be taken into account, but which is never included in any reflection on the part of leaders or the media.
One could almost believe that it represents a disconnected, non-operative, soft, dead part. There are few questions about its nature, and even fewer questions about its complexity.

I'm part of that mass. Yet I don't feel disconnected, unable or soft, let alone dead.
I never voted

Never. I have always been able to explain why, but the arguments have gradually evolved. From those of a very angry post-adolescent to those of an adult who is a little more at peace with his thoughts. And while the turbulence has eased somewhat, the radical nature of my commitment not to vote has only strengthened.

It was by means of structural analysis (perhaps unconscious at the time, well aware today) of the organisation of political and decision-making life that I felt that abstaining seemed to me to be the most logical solution at first, and the most dignified one now.

I did not understand at the time how the voting system could be constructed in such a way as to give the right to vote to a lost student who lives with his parents and receives scholarships and not to an immigrant worker who turbine every day... injustice.

I do not understand today how one can still believe in providence (candidates) or fall into blackmail (helpful vote), after so many years of systemic lies. I understand even less when we dig beyond those who are in the front line (always the candidates) and realize how this works. As such, this documentary sums it up well:

A public health problem
With the current presidential elections coming up, I thought I had, like every time, a rush of questions: maybe this time yes? Maybe by that means yes?
I had stumbled across the LaPrimaire. org website. The initiative and modalities appealed to me and attracted me. I recognized myself a little bit, until I remembered the synthesis of my abstention: to avoid participating in the circus of madmen.

Because really, it's a circus, full of madness in the medical sense of the word. The absolute schizophrenia of the candidates, the frenzy of the supporters, the amnesia of the commentators, and this feeling of terrible perdition in the crowds. And by the way, there is no shortage of symptoms... From the outside, to look at it as one would read La Ferme des Animaux, it is not only extraordinary but also fiercely unhealthy.
And we treat this as an accepted normality, digested, logical, rational and validated by the gesture of voting. Above all, it is a reality that cannot be discarded: there would be no alternative, or it would quickly be accused of either utopia or anti-democracy. If not both. Never daring to call a cat a cat, as some authors have done so well before us:

I am deeply convinced that true fascism is what sociologists have too nicely called the consumer society, a definition that seems harmless and purely indicative. That is not the case. If we look at reality, and especially if we know how to read in objects, landscapes, town planning and above all people, we can see that the results of this carefree consumer society are themselves the result of a dictatorship, a pure and simple fascism. "- Pier Paolo Pasolini

The expectation of the Messiah and the worship of the genius[?] are only? a miserable blanket of impotence. The revolution will be terrible, but anonymous. "- Amadeo Bordiga
"You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised. "- Gil Scott Heron
Action / Reaction
Having said that, it's hard for me to give up. I can't do it, even though I would probably find more peace of mind there... I too often remember these quotes, which, once connected to each other, make me want to participate in the change. Because it is not a simple alternation, or a remodeling under the tutelage of a former "master" (6th Republic...) that is necessary to be born. But indeed a change, in all the radicality that the definition of the word implies.

And I believe that, unfortunately, many of us still live in comfort that is sufficiently anaesthetic for a real craze for deep-seated change to take place on a large scale. This drug lasts, comfort, still has too big a footprint on us.